Despite Benny Gantz's crowded election schedule, the former IDF chief-of-staff who is running for the Knesset at the head of the newly-formed Israel Resilience Party (Hosen L'Yisrael) continues to serve as an external director on the board of income-producing real estate company Amot Investments Ltd. (TASE:AMOT). Last month, Gantz exercised options on Amot shares and sold the shares on the stock exchange at NIS 18 per share, giving him a pre-tax profit of some NIS 440,000. Amot's notice says that Gantz converted a package of options to about 55,000 shares in the company at an exercise price of a little over NIS 10 per share.
Gantz is not the only one to have exercised options on Amot shares in the past few weeks. Other directors (among them former Prime Minister's Office director general Eyal Gabbai) and some senior managers (among them CEO Avi Mosler) exercised options, but some of them have kept the shares they thereby obtained.
Gantz became an external director at Amot in November 2015, eight months after the end of his term as chief-of-staff. Like the other directors at the company, he is entitled to a salary and stock-based compensation, in accordance with the company's compensation policy.
According to Amot's latest annual report (for 2017) the maximum annual compensation for a director is NIS 111,000. Directors are paid NIS 3,350 for attending meetings. In 2017, Amot paid its directors a total of NIS 935,000.
Amot Investments, which is controlled by real estate investment company Alony Hetz Property and Investments Ltd. (TASE: ALHE), which in turn is controlled by Nathan Hetz and the Wertheim family, holds about 100 income producing properties in Israel, with rented space totaling some 840,000 square meters. Its flagship project is the TOHA tower, which it is constructing together with Bayside Land Corp. Ltd.(Gav Yam) (TASE: BYSD1), close to the Hashalom interchange and the Azrieli towers in Tel Aviv. The new tower is expected to be occupied this year.
Amot's share price has risen 10% so far this year, giving the company a market cap of NIS 6.9 billion.
Gantz is also a director of Elron Electronic Industries Ltd. (TASE: ELRN), which is active in medical devices and cyber security, and is controlled by Eduardo Elsztain's Discount Investment.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 11, 2019
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