Business brief
Global Fund Titans Target Shekel Capital as Tech Wealth Reshapes Domestic Finance
State Street and First Trust eye the Tel Aviv ETF market, Wiz founders circle credit card issuer CAL, and Teva advances its next blockbuster biologic.
Business
Wiz founders are bidding for credit card titan CAL — recycling enterprise cybersecurity profits to build a domestic consumer banking and retail empire.
BackgroundCAL is controlled by Israel Discount Bank, which faces regulatory requirements under national banking reforms to divest its retail credit card operations. The same Wiz founding group recently purchased the McDonald's Israel restaurant network, demonstrating an appetite for mature cash-generating retail platforms.
- Israel Discount Bank resumed exploring strategic sales for CAL after a previous buyout pact with institutional investors fell apart over governance disagreements.
- Buying CAL would hand the cybersecurity founders a consumer lending giant processing tens of billions of shekels annually across Israeli retail channels.
- The potential bid marks a structural shift as software fortunes flow into traditional domestic financial infrastructure and consumer-facing service businesses.
Business
Stripe is launching direct merchant clearing in Israel — threatening domestic credit card monopolies with developer-first checkout tools and aggressive interchange fee competition.
BackgroundStripe provides developer-friendly payment APIs that power e-commerce and software billing worldwide, but previously lacked direct clearing capabilities in shekels. Israeli internet merchants were forced to route payments through foreign entities or rely on cumbersome integrations with legacy domestic processors.
- Stripe is recruiting local compliance, risk, and sales specialists in Tel Aviv to support direct domestic shekel clearing under local financial regulations.
- Direct local merchant acquiring threatens the high interchange fees and proprietary terminal margins historically guarded by domestic credit card companies.
- Israeli online retailers and tech startups will gain native shekel processing alongside multi-currency cross-border checkout tools without paying foreign transaction surcharges.
Business
State Street and First Trust are targeting ₪222B in Israeli ETF assets — squeezing domestic manager fees while making shekel exposure to foreign benchmarks cheaper.
BackgroundIsrael's mutual fund industry manages approximately ₪857 billion, with exchange-traded funds accounting for ₪222.4 billion of total domestic market assets. Foreign managers have increasingly entered the Tel Aviv exchange using dual-listed fund structures that let local investors buy foreign benchmarks in shekels.
- Invesco alone oversees roughly ₪10 billion across Israeli-listed funds tracking the S&P 500, proving local investors are eager for cheap foreign index exposure.
- State Street and First Trust are partnering with Israeli market makers to register foreign UCITS vehicles traded directly in shekels during domestic market hours.
- The arrival of additional global fund managers will intensify fee competition, squeezing profit margins for domestic banks and mutual fund houses.
Business
Teva cleared duvakitug for Phase III trials — validating its shift toward novel biologics that could unlock billions in high-margin enterprise valuation.
BackgroundTeva is working to diversify revenue beyond commoditized generic drugs by co-developing novel therapies for autoimmune and gastrointestinal disorders. Duvakitug targets anti-TL1A, a competitive therapeutic pathway that recently triggered multi-billion-dollar buyouts by major pharmaceutical rivals Merck and Roche.
- Phase IIb trial results showed sustained endoscopic healing and clinical remission across Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis patients with clean long-term safety profiles.
- Sanofi and Teva share global commercialization rights equally, positioning the Israeli drugmaker to capture substantial high-margin revenue if the drug reaches market.
- Successful late-stage differentiation is critical as rival biopharma giants accelerate competing TL1A candidates through late-stage clinical pipelines worldwide.
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