The interest Uri Ben-Nun is taking in Israel Chemicals should surprise no one. Ben-Nun’s animosity towards the company’s controlling shareholders, Erwin Eisenberg and his brother-in-law Yigal Dimant is well known, as is the fact that he is almost completely identified with ICL’s principal holding, DSW. Anyone assuming that Ben-Nun would regard the affair as a closed chapter, following his financially very well padded but nonetheless forced resignation from the concern last year, was very much mistaken.
As soon as the results of the ICL share issue became known on Monday, Ben-Nun’s name came up almost automatically. The purchase of 9% of ICL by major competitor Potash of Canada, entitles that company to an representative on the Board of Directors. The position is tailor-made for Ben-Nun, who since resigning has on more than one occasion criticised the way the concern is being managed.
Ben-Nun certainly earned well at the Dead Sea Works. He also left with a total of NIS 20 million in severance pay and pension commitments. Even so, the purchase of such a big share package was beyond his means, especially since it is not at all clear whether the terms of his departure from DSW permit him such an acquisition.
To be appointed Potash’s director on the ICL board would seem a brilliant solution from Ben-Nun’s point of view, even if it is by no means certain that the Canadian company’s bosses are eager for a confrontation of this sort. For Eisenberg and Dimant, it would be a real nightmare. Not only would they have to sleep with the enemy, who could well gain exposure to ICL’s trade secrets, they would also be meeting, on a regular basis, with their own personal thorn in the side.
Uri Ben-Nun’s one-man mutiny against the heads of ICL, possibly an unprecedented attempt on the part of a salaried general manager to challenge his controlling shareholders, took place in 1997, after many years of fruitful co-operation. Fifty six year old Ben-Nun served two terms of office at Dead Sea Works. In 1984, he left his job as deputy general manager i/c finance, after a quarrel with the then CEO, his cousin, Aryeh Shachar. Following several years as general manager of Tel Aviv’s central bus station and as a director in Zim, he was asked to take up management of the company in 1991.
Ben-Nun ran DSW with an iron fist. A talented, authoritative manager, he was admired by his subordinates. Not only did he care nothing for his superiors, the Board of Directors, he was sometimes openly contemptuous of them. He gave the company a good shake-up, and led it to enormous investments, culminating in the set up, jointly with Volkswagen, of the magnesium plant in Sedom.
Ben-Nun, due to his excellent relations with the late Shoul Eisenberg, enthusiastically supported the transfer of control in ICL from the State of Israel to the Israel Corporation. This transfer should seemingly have reinforced his standing at the Dead Sea Works. In fact, it paved his way out.
Eisenberg’s successors, his son Erwin and son-in-law Yigal Dimant, took a dim view of Ben-Nun’s despotic management of DSW. It was no walkover; Ben-Nun put up a demonic fight over the amount of compensation due to him, but was finally forced to resign.
Since that happened, Ben-Nun has not been named in connection with new businesses. He has, however, been very outspoken with his opinions of Eisenberg and Dimant. Two of his more delicately worded statements were: "Eisenberg and Dimant understand nothing about industry or industrial management", and "Eisenberg and Dimant regarded me as someone who stood in their way. But they apparently forgot my specific contribution to the Dead Sea Works".
Ben-Nun’s attacks on the heads of the Israel Corporation have recently become more vitriolic. He roundly denounced the gigantic investment DSW plans to make in China, to set up a potash plant at an expected investment of $150 million.
According to Ben-Nun, Erwin Eisenberg preferred to make this high risk investment through the public company in which he has only a 20% holding, whereas it was originally intended to invest through private company UDI, which is wholly owned by the Eisenberg family.
Under the terms of the 1991 agreement between DSW and China, UDI was to bear 50% of the project’s cost, whereas under the present agreement, the bulk of the investment falls on DSW (which was originally only supposed to supply the know-how for the project). "DSW’s chances of getting its money back are non-existent", Ben-Nun asserted. "In the normal way of things, this deal would never have got past any board of directors".
It was recently reported that, following some of Ben-Nun’s more acerbic utterances, certain ICL elements have been trying to prevent the DSW’s works committee from signing an agreement with him for the purchase of 2,000 copies of a book he wrote on the set-up of the magnesium project. DSW management denies the report.
Published by Israel's Business Arena December 10, 1998