The Bank Leumi le-Israel, Israel’s oldest and largest banking institution, now has 100,000,000 Israel pounds on deposit, and has loans outstanding in the sum of over 60,000,000 Israel pounds, Dr. Asher Poshter, vice-president of the bank, yesterday told a press conference here. The bank, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, started its operations in 1903 with a capitalization of 40,000 pounds sterling.
Dr. Posher is visiting the United States to study American banking and financial practices. He is a prominent financial authority in Israel, where he has been associated with the bank for over 20 years. His present survey of financial institutions will include visits to the mid-West, the West Coast, and other parts of the United States. The bank now has 42 branches in Israel, and offices in New York, London and Zurich. In recent years, a growing proportion of its banking business has been concentrated in the United States.
Dr. Poshter stressed the close inter-relationship between the over-all economic development of Israel and the expansion of the activities of the Bank Leumi. “As Israel’s industries grow under the impact of American investments in the Israel Bond Issue,” he said, “the Bank finds increasing opportunity to participate in that growth, and to facilitate it by a forward-looking loan policy.”
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