Investing in Israeli Firms Sparks More Interest Here
KAREN BUCKELEW
Daily Record Business Writer
July 27, 2007
American investors and businesspeople are beginning to realize that doing
business with Israeli firms can generate economic benefits, as well as a
feeling of well-being by helping Israel.
A benevolent feeling is not enough to induce venture capitalists to open
their wallets, said Abba D. Poliakoff, chair of the Maryland/Israel
Development Center (MIDC), which is hosting its fourth annual life sciences
conference in Baltimore.
“That reason alone would not be sufficient,” Poliakoff said Thursday at
the conference. “That reason, coupled with the phenomenal technology coming
out of Israel, makes people feel good about making a good investment.”
Encouraging investment and collaborations between Maryland companies and
those in Israel is the foundation of the Maryland/Israel Development Center,
a nonprofit founded 15 years ago through a partnership between the Maryland
Department of Business and Economic Development, the Israeli government and
the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.
At the height of the tech industry boom in the 1990s, 50 Israeli
technology, homeland security and bioscience firms resided in Maryland, said
Poliakoff, an attorney with Gordon Feinblatt in Baltimore.
Today more than 30 Israeli companies remain in the state, he said.
The life sciences conference is part of the MIDC’s MarketReach America
initiative to bring Israeli entrepreneurs in contact with American
regulators, investors and scientists in the hope that more firms will choose
Maryland as their American headquarters.
More than 170 attendees were expected at the event at the Johns Hopkins
Hospital and Health System campus, including representatives of about 30
venture-capital firms, according to Barry Bogage, MIDC executive director.
Representatives of 15 Israeli companies also attended.
Fewer than 20 people attended the first such conference four years ago,
Poliakoff said.
There still are plenty of obstacles for Israeli firms to overcome, said
Robert A. Rosenbaum, a partner with Nobska Ventures, a venture-capital firm
based in Stevenson.
Investment opportunities abound in Israel, Rosenbaum said, because the
climate for technology and bioscience is rich, but venture capital is
relatively scarce.
The “dearth” of investment, Rosenbaum said, is due in part to the
relative youth of the Israeli firms.
Many firms also likely shy away from the country because of the ongoing
violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, said Rosenbaum, whose
firm has invested in two Israeli companies.
Then, of course, there is the vast distance between Israel and the target
consumer markets of Europe and the U.S.
Rosenbaum added, “There’s the risk, sometimes, of culture. Israeli
business folks have a different style of doing business. They’re confident,
they’re smart, and they’re not afraid to share that fact.”
Part of MIDC’s mission is to help Israeli executives learn to do business
in a more American or more European way, said Poliakoff.
Dr. Harold Jacob, a Baltimore native who moved to Israel in 1995 for
religious reasons, was one of the Israeli business owners at the conference
this week. Jacob is CEO of NanoVibronix, the medical device company he
founded in Nesher, Israel.
Jacob, in his second year at the life sciences conference, has won
American investment for his firm and likely will set up NanoVibronix’s
American headquarters in Baltimore within the next 18 months.
“I really don’t believe you’re seeing people invest in these companies as
a charitable venture,” Jacob said of himself and the other firms at the
conference. “I think [investors] are realizing they can do well financially
and do good.”