The new controlling shareholders of IDB Holding Corp. Ltd. (TASE:IDBH), Eduardo Elsztain and Moti Ben-Moshe, today appointed Aharon Fogel as chairman of its operational subsidiary, IDB Development Corporation. Fogel recently left his position as chairman of Migdal Insurance and Financial Holdings Ltd. (TASE: MGDL) in favor of its new controlling shareholder, Shlomo Eliahu.
In late 2013, IDB Holding's bondholders trustee petitioned the court to appoint Fogel as chairman of IDB Development, and in December he met with some members of the bondholders representative. He will apparently seek to institute at IDB the work methods used at Migdal, which is considered to have a high-quality board of directors, which frequently acted as the company's real owner.
IDB's new controlling shareholders will have to consider another aspect about Fogel - the salary cost to which he has become accustomed at his previous jobs. This is necessary given the criticism over the exorbitant salary packages of IDB executives under its previous controlling shareholder, Nochi Dankner. At Migdal, Fogel's salary cost averaged more than NIS 3 million a year.
Fogel held a number of positions at the Ministry of Finance in the 1980s and 1990s. He was appointed the ministry's director general, and the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin nicknamed the ministry's staff as the "Fogelists".
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 7, 2014
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