Canadian investment firm Evergreen continues to deliver the goods: CAD $ 5.2 million (NIS 12.8 million) profits in 1996. In the four years since going public, Evergreen posted CAD $20 million (NIS 50 million) in profit, mainly from strict screening of investments, mostly in high-tech, and selling them at peak prices.
While 1996 was also characterized by profit realization (mainly in Rosebud), it was also a watershed year for Evergreen in terms of managing third party investments and stock issues.
Evergreen is mainly active in managing risk capital. During 1996, Evergreen raised CAD $30 million in the IJT fund (mainly from Japanese and Taiwanese economic concerns) and in now completing the new Periscope 1 fund, raising $50 million.
Periscope 1 Fund will be managed together with the US investment bank Robertson Stephens. Evergreen chairman Jacob Burak says that this is an important step in cementing relations and deepening cooperation between the two companies, which acted together last year in several Israeli stock issues on Wall Street.
After raising funds for Periscope 1, Evergreen will manage CAD $16 million (NIS 400 million) in its long term funds, half of which is available for investment.
Burak opens the annual report’s review of the year, as usual, with a subjective opinion concerning the business environment of the company. He claims that "Investment markets for high-tech companies and growth companies are characterized as follows: 1) A feeling of unlimited capital availability for investment. State injected funds, local and foreign investors, and risk-capital funds completing second and third round financings, amount to half a billion dollars of funds searching for appropriate instruments. 2) A capital market (in this case the US market) breaking records every week, generating the feeling that, contrary to the laws of nature, this will continue forever. 3) Intensified competition for promising investments, and a direct link between risk-capital investments and public issues based on widespread presence of US investment bankers in Israel."
"The foregoing" summarizes Burak, "is a sure-fire prescription for a painful, and predictable, shake-out, and the events in the Israeli capital markets of the past years are testimony to whoever still needs to be reminded".