American Investor Reportedly Interested in Koor Industries

A leading American investment company with holdings in Israel was reported Monday to be negotiating for the purchase of Koor Industries.

The financially ailing Histadrut-owned conglomerate is in receivership and efforts to save it have been dragging on for more than a year.

Negotiations were suspended, however, when Stanley could, president and chairman of the American Shamrock Investment Co., arrived here Thursday total business with Histadrut and the Treasury. He left Sunday night.

Shamrock reportedly offered up to $250 million for Koor, whose subsidiaries account for about a third of Israel’s industrial output and some 40,000 jobs.

Gould was said to have made two conditions for purchase: that his firm acquire a controlling interest of at least 53 percent and that the government and the banks help bail out Koor before the sale goes through.

Finance Minister Shimon Peres said the Treasury was considering the American offer and would reach a decision in “a week or so.”

But a spokesman for Histadrut’s Hevrat Haovdim, which owns Koor, said the company had not received an offer from Shamrock.

While the government was said to have promised about $100 million to help save Koor, Peres stressed that it made no commitment to get Koor out of the red.

Its chief creditors are Israeli banks, which would have to write off about $200 million in debts to meet Gould’s conditions. American Shamrock, described as one of the largest investment houses in the United States, already owns 50 percent of the Telad television production studios in Jerusalem, and is a partner in a protein production plant at Kibbutz Hatzor in the Negev.

Gould told Yediot Achronot that Koor has great potential and operates many fine companies, and that it could prosper with the right recovery plan.

Meanwhile, other foreign investors are said to have expressed interest in Koor. A local report mentioned the Belzberg brothers, wealthy Orthodox Jews from Canada.