Assistance to El Al: The Ministry of Finance will transfer an advance of $ 210 million

The Ministry of Finance has summarized the details of the assistance to El Al: According to the agreement to be signed tomorrow (Thursday), the Ministry of Finance will transfer an advance of $ 210 million to El Al at the expense of defense expenses - future flight tickets of the security personnel placed on the flight.
The agreement is for 20 years and only applies to the expenses of flight tickets to the security system. In other words, the state still participates in the cost of employing the security guard, but will be released from paying the flight tickets to the security guards, thus saving tens of millions of shekels. According to the Treasury, the amount paid in advance to El Al is lower than the real price of the tickets.
In addition, El Al will not be able to distribute a dividend for a period of about six years. Ynet has learned that the Treasury will also offer a similar agreement to Israir and Arkia, which will be conditional on the issuance of shares with the participation of the owners. Since El Al was saved in the down payment arrangement, interest and fees that the banks would have charged the company in the amount of $ 100 million, the Treasury owed El Al an additional issue of the company's shares in the amount of $ 105 million.
El Al's owner, Eli Rosenberg, will undertake to purchase shares in an issue worth $ 43 million. Thus, Rosenberg's investment so far amounted to $ 200 million.
The down payment transaction was born after the failure of negotiations, which lasted about a year, between El Al and Bank Leumi and Bank Discount, for a loan of $ 300 million. This was despite the state providing a guarantee of 82.5% of the loan amount. Due to the high risk they saw in the aviation industry, which has not yet ended the crisis.
It should be noted that most of the world governments have provided generous assistance to airlines. The company is now committed to starting a recovery process, which includes laying off 2,000 employees. Until now, the recovery procedure was conditional on receiving the loan from the banks, and now a change has been introduced and is charged upon receipt of the down payment.