Kibbutz Shamir signed a huge deal to sell the rest of his shares in the optics company he founded

Posted on Aug 3, 2022 by Ifi Reporter - Dan Bielski

On Monday, Kibbutz Shamir signed a huge deal to sell the rest of his shares in the optics company he founded, Shamir Optica, at a whopping value of one billion dollars. The shares were sold to the French-Italian giant corporation Essilor-Loacoustica which already owned 50% of the shares.
In other words: the kibbutz will receive $500 million for its holdings in the company. In 2011, the kibbutz sold 37% of the shares to the French Essilor at a value of 260 million dollars, so the value jumped 4 times over 11 years.
The kibbutz has 450 members so the calculation is more than a million dollars per member. However, this is a privatized kibbutz so that only a relatively small part of the amount, 50 million dollars according to estimates, will be distributed among the members and the remainder will be used to build a model that will ensure the financial future of the kibbutz.
Shamir is a privatized kibbutz that operates in a cooperative model. The deal was led on behalf of the kibbutz by chairman Omri Rotem. Rotem has been leading the company as chairman for the past few years, having previously served as chairman of the kibbutz's economic committee.
Among the founders of the factory were Giora Ben Ze'ev and Uzi Tzur, and they led it until the beginning of the previous decade. The agreement stipulates that the company's development center will continue to be in the kibbutz.


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