In 1969, David Rubner was a laboratory research engineer at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, in the US, when he received an offer from Chaim Herzog, chairman of Israeli air-conditioning and electrical appliances company Electra, to set up an electronics division. It was an opportunity for Rubner, married to an Israeli, to come and live in Israel, although he did not manage to set up the division.
Only after a separate company was established did Rubner take up the position of head engineer. The company acquired the Electronic Company of Israel, and that was the beginning of ECI Telecom, whose annual turnover now reaches $1.2 billion. Rubner was appointed general manager in 1991, and will step down in March 2000, at the age of 60.
From an almost anonymous company in the 1970s ECI Telecom has reached the status of Israel's number one high tech company, and the country's top high tech exporter. Almost all of its sales are overseas, and the fact that a sales office for Israel was set up only last year proves the point more than anything else.
In light of all this, Rubner's influence on Israel's high tech industry standing in the world has been incomparable. Despite the recent criticism of Rubner, due to a decline in company sales in the last three quarters, no-one can deprive him of the eight years of profitability and growth in the company's overall activities, or the number of fields in which the company engages. ECI today, following the great merger with Tadiran Telecommunications is a success story largely accredited to Rubner.
Rubner plans to set up an investment company on similar lines to the company former Koor general manager Benny Gaon founded, and make it his home base. His salary as ECI Telecom general manager is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, and he has considerable amounts of ECI shares, some of which he purchased in the 1980s at bargain prices. He also sold quite a few over the years.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on December 14, 1999