AMPAL-American Israel Corporation - excerpt from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, 1986
This page is an extract, reproduced with permission, from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1986. [1]
- Year established: 1942
- President: Michael Jaffe
- Chairman of the Board: Ephraim Reiner
- Address: 10 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020
AMPAL was established originally as the American Palestine Corporation. By the early 1970s, the corporation had become gradually but completely controlled by the Israeli Bank Hapoalim, a Histadrut company. At the end of 1977, Bank Hapoalim sold one-third of AMPAL's shares to a West German bank but still retained controlling voting rights.
AMPAL is a New York-registered investment corporation. It describes itself as being ‘primarily engaged in the business of financing ... industrial, financial, commercial and agricultural enterprises in Israel.’ In other words, whereas the UJA mobilizes contributions, and the IBO recruits loans for the Israeli government, AMPAL solicits direct investment in business enterprises in Israel.
Until 1977, AMPAL remained a relatively small company, owning three minor banks that provided industrial loans. However, toward the end of the year, AMPAL showed sudden growth and by 1982 its profits had increased threefold, with a net income of $15.2 million. With assets in excess of $900 million, AMPAL represents a big potential for foreign investment in Israel. [2] Ha'aretz writer Eliezer Lavin concluded in January 1984, however, that the actual volume of investment funds AMPAL was supposed to have mobilized in the United States was small, and that most of the company's profits were passed on to its American investors instead of being redirected to enterprises in Israel. [3]
- An investigation into AMPAL and other Labor Party-affiliated financial institutions erupted into scandal in February 1984, when AMPAL board chairman Yaacov Levinson killed himself. [4]
