Former Supreme Court judge Yoram Danziger has been appointed as an external examiner to decide whether the ousting of Clal Insurance Enterprises Holdings Ltd. (TASE: CLIS) Yoram Naveh by the company's chairman Dan Naveh (no relation) will go ahead.
Clal Insurance appointed the external examiner in accordance with instructions by Israel Capital Markets, Insurance and Saving Authority director Moshe Bareket. The appointment itself was made by Clal Insurance's Audit Committee.
In the past few days, Clal Insurance has been the scene of a public and ill-tempered confrontation between its chairman and its CEO. Dan Naveh himself brought in Yoram Naveh as CEO less than two years ago, but now says that the latter has not managed to engineer the hoped-for change in Clal Insurance's performance, which now, as when he was appointed, lags far behind that of its competitors.
For his part, the CEO accuses the chairman of surrendering to pressure by shareholders, particularly Mori Arkin and Eyal Lapidot, who turned against him because he would not help them in their businesses.
Danziger was a justice of the Supreme Court until 2018. He is a professor in the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University. Before his appointment as a judge he was a prominent private lawyer. He is currently heading another important probe in Israel's financial sector: the committee appointed by Bank Hapoalim (TASE: POLI) to examine the affair of assistance to US customers to evade taxes, in which the bank recently reached a $870 million settlement with the US authorities. The affair cost the bank hundreds of millions of dollars more in legal and other fees. Among other things, the committee will examine whether former senior managers at Bank Hapoalim should have to return bonuses paid to them in past years.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 11, 2020
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