Articles by December, 2019

The Central Bureau of Statistics data shows that in the past two months, Israeli consumers are more pessimistic about their economic future - a trend that is reflected in the negative rate of consumer confidence. Last November, the consumer confidence index stood at a negative 14%, compared with a negative 10% in October. Further, two of the sub-indices that make up the Consumer Confidence Index were aggravated: the expected change in the state of the economy, which stood at a negative rate of 19% in November, compared with 12% in September, and the expected change in the state of the...

42% of households in Israel that own a bank account have been in an overdraft account for at least one month during the past year (2018). This represents no less than 1.1 million households, comprising 4 million persons. This is according to a survey of household financial assets, published by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). The survey, for the sixth consecutive year, has followed a fixed sample of about 4,000 households with about 12,000 persons over the years. According to the findings, about half (52%) of households with children have been over-drawn for at least one month in...

Broadcom chipmaker defeated the israeli tax authority: Broadcom District Court received Broadcom's NIS 150 million tax assessment for its Dune acquisition deal. In the judgment, Tax Judge Dr. Samuel Bornstein rejected the tax authority's claim that the Dune acquisition by Broadcom Semiconductors Ltd. was an artificial transaction, and even required the tax authority to pay Broadcom legal fees of NIS 75,000. For Broadcom, this is a "saving" of about NIS 150 million. The original tax authority requirement from the company, from 2009, was about NIS 100 million, and the amount accrued interest

Partner and Amazon's joint and first campaign began on Sunday as the focus is of the most popular streaming giant series. Partner and Amazon project in Israel began in a partnership with Partner TV in April 2018, when the app is accessible in all of the company's converters. At the end of August, HOT also announced that it had signed an agreement with Amazon and that in the coming months the service would be available to the company's subscribers. Amazon's service has not yet fully localized in Israel and is in the process of translating and translating its contents into Hebrew. Amazon...

A class action lawsuit has been filed and approved against the Phoenix insurance company for health insurance policies issued by 2016. The scope of the claim is estimated to be NIS 125 million. This is a class action request that was filed in June 2015 and dealt with how the insurance company used to compensate policyholders who used the supplemental insurance of their health insurance fund rather than private insurance. The period during which the claim is concerned is June 2012 to June 2015. By 2016, private health insurance policies included a mechanism that would incentivize...

US chip giant Intel will buy Israeli startup Habana Labs for $ 2 billion. Bana Labs produces chips specifically designed for artificial intelligence processing. In the announcement of the acquisition, Intel said that the founder and chairman of the company, Avigdor Vilentz, "will serve as senior advisor to the business unit as well as Intel" and that the company will continue to operate from Israel. Intel said the two companies "could accelerate the development of the best artificial intelligence products into data centers. The integration of the companies strengthens Intel's line of...

A serious breach in Wetsap has been identified by Israeli cyber researchers, it allowed hackers to send a message to group chats, which could cause the app to collapse for all chat members. In this way, hackers could force users to delete the app, download it again, and delete all data in the group chat. WhatsApp fixed the security vulnerability after Check Point investigators reported it and recommended updating it to the latest version available in the app stores. Wattsap has over 1.5 billion users worldwide and is considered the largest and most popular chat app today. More than 65...

The accidents at the construction sites. On Thursday, two workers were killed in two different accidents in Beer Yaakov and Lachish. Even before those accidents, the number of fatalities for 2019 has peaked compared to previous years, at this time the number of fatalities this year is 45 compared to 39 in 2018 and 36 in 2017. The increase in the number of accidents continues despite the fact that several measures were supposed to have been taken that were intended to reduce the extent of the injured and killed, but in practice the safety issue has not yet penetrated to the level of the...

The Ministry of Finance and Health has concluded that the drug basket budget for 2020 will be NIS 500 million. Same amount as budget for 2019-2017. Deputy Minister of Health Jacob Litzman pledged to increase the budget to NIS 700 and even NIS 750 million, but due to the fact that a transitional government has not allowed him to fulfill his promise. About 900 drugs and technologies with a total cost of over NIS 3 billion have been submitted to the Therapy Basket Committee, headed by Prof. Zeev Rothstein. Since the budget is only half a billion shekels, it covers only one-sixth of the needs

2019 will continue the downward trend in construction starts. Although in the first three quarters of the year construction starts were 4% higher than those recorded in the corresponding three quarters in 2018, the data is very far from the 2016 peak data, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) data released today. Following much criticism of major updates on construction startup publications, the CBS changed its flow rate, and as of January 2019, they are based on the Bureau's Field Survey only, as opposed to previous years, so comparing 2019 data to its predecessors is a...