Last week it was learned that the holding company canon which is controlled by Idan Ofer plans to sell its shares Zim in her possession – he may have stolen the entire possession. Ofer, through Ansonia, owns 61.9% of Canon’s shares, with a current market value of over 3.5 billion shekels, and Canon owns 16.5% of the shares of the shipping company Zim, whose current value reaches 437 million dollars – after having already redeemed shares recently. Zim’s stock has almost tripled its value in the past year, which has led to a nice jump in Canon’s value as well.
For many years, Idan Ofer was considered one of the richest Israelis in the world, but if you try to examine the value of the capital in his hands, the answer is not clear-cut. According to Forbes magazine, his fortune is estimated at 17 billion dollars and he is in the 114th place among the richest people in the world. Alongside this, Bloomberg recently published the index of billionaires, in which Ofer appears in 63rd place with a fortune amounting to 28.3 billion dollars – a jump of 8.25 billion dollars from the beginning of the year. According to Bloomberg data, Ofer has overtaken the fortune of his brother Eyal, who is in 72nd place on the list with 26.9 billion dollars (according to Forbes, Eyal Ofer is still above his brother on the list).
Other Israeli billionaires on the list of the financial information provider Bloomberg are below Idan Ofer, including Shari Arison with a fortune of about 8.8 billion dollars, and the brothers Igor and Dimitri Buchman with over 6.3 billion dollars each (the founders of the Playrix gaming company). There is only one above him – the Israeli-American Miriam Adelson who is ranked 44th with a fortune of 38.1 billion dollars, most of which comes from her shares in the Las Vegas Sands casino and hotel company.
Bloomberg notes that most of Idan Ofer’s fortune is attributed to private assets worth $22 billion: “Most of his fortune comes from the global shipping business that his father (Sami Ofer) founded in the late 1960s. With the father’s death in 2011, the family assets were divided equally between Idan and his brothers Eyal”.
The sharp increase in Idan Ofer’s fortune is explained in Bloomberg with an updated calculation of the value of the ships he owns through the Singapore company Quantum Pacific Shipping; The increase in the value of the ships this year was 7 billion dollars. Bloomberg states that the company has a diverse fleet of about 300 ships and their value is calculated by VesselsValue.com based on transactions and construction prices of ships, and it includes the ships in the fleet and those currently being built, and leverage is also taken into account.
“Adventurous” possessions using canon
Other assets held by Idan Ofer, according to Bloomberg, are the holdings inA company in Israel and in the canon. According to the stock exchange data, Ofer currently owns directly and indirectly through various companies 48.2% of the shares of Israel Company (the controlling owner of the fertilizer giant ICL) with a current value of over NIS 3 billion. As mentioned, his holding in Canon has a current value of over NIS 3.5 billion.
Canon was split from the Israel company in 2015, and became an independent company that trades simultaneously on the Tel Aviv and New York stock exchanges. As part of the split, the Israeli company remained with long-standing holdings in ICL and Zen, and Canon received the holdings that were perceived as more “adventurous” – the chip company Tower, the Chinese car company Corus, electricity production activities in Israel and abroad, as well as the ZIM shares. In the years after the split , Canon distributed the Tower shares as a dividend, sold its energy and automotive activities abroad and issued the Electricity producer OPC Energy is listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (Canon currently owns 54.5% of OPC shares worth NIS 4.06 billion).
In addition, Bloomberg notes that Ofer owns half of the XT Group, an Israeli investment company that invests in shipping, aviation and technology. His other holdings come from the field of football – 32% of the top Spanish team Atlético Madrid and 85% of FC Famalicao from Portugal, which Ofer purchased in 2017-2019.
The holding in Zim is for sale
And back to Tzim, managed by Eli Glickman, who is currently experiencing a renewed tide in her business. The shipping company surpassed analysts’ forecasts in the third quarter of 2024 reports it published recently, when it recorded revenues of approximately $2.77 billion – a growth of 117%, and a net profit of over $1.1 billion, compared to the loss in the corresponding quarter last year. At the same time, Zim raised its annual forecast for the third time in a row.
The reports revealed that in the third quarter Zim transported a record number of 970,000 containers, an increase of 11.9% compared to the corresponding quarter, and the average transportation price per container was $2,480 – more than twice the corresponding one.
Zim, which was first issued on the New York Stock Exchange nearly 4 years ago at a value of 1.5 billion dollars, is currently traded at a value of 2.66 billion dollars, after an impressive increase in the stock (but a decrease of about 18% in the last two weeks). The offering came after two major debt arrangements that Zim carried out: in 2009, it redistributed a debt of 7 billion dollars, and in 2014, it made a “haircut” of about 50% to a debt amounting to 3.4 billion dollars.
Ofer’s Israel company owned about half of Zim’s shares since 1970, and in 2004 it increased to holding almost 100% when it purchased the state’s shares at a value of 236 million dollars for Zim. In the first years after the purchase, Zim showed good results, but later it ran into difficulties from which it had difficulty recovering, and which led to the debt settlements in which the company poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Israel.
After Zim’s IPO in New York, and against the background of the tide in the maritime transport market in the previous years (following the corona epidemic and the supply chain crisis), Zim distributed generous dividends that amount to more than $43 per share – double the current share price – of which Canon was the main beneficiary. After the IPO, Canon owned about 30% of Zim’s shares, but sold some of them to her successors and currently owns about half of that – a holding that she is also currently selling.
For your attention: The Globes system strives for a diverse, relevant and respectful discourse in accordance with the code of ethics that appears in the trust report according to which we operate. Expressions of violence, racism, incitement or any other inappropriate discourse are filtered out automatically and will not be published on the website.