Bank Hapoalim scents major expansion for Gazit Globe

Gazit Globe (TASE: GLOB) http://www.themarker.com/eng/tools/toolsResult.jhtml?application=8&chosen=126011 represents a chance of high returns at low risk, rules Bank Hapoalim in a report on the real estate investment firm.

The report, dated July 2, gives Gazit Globe - run by Chaim Katzman and Dori Segal - a 12-month price target of NIS 66, while the company's share price started the week at NIS 53 on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

The company has a record going back years of rapid revenue growth, even in comparison with comparable real estate investment trusts around the world, says the bank. Gazit Globe's pace of investment and expansion is aggressive, the bank said.

From 2002 to the present the company has invested a stunning NIS 25 billion. Its investments in the last year and a half alone came to NIS 11 billion.

While about it, Gazit Globe broadened its sphere of activity. Its ambition, presented at a conference of analysts, is to become one of the world's major international real estate companies. How? By entering new territories and developing new businesses in real estate and tangential sectors, says chairman Katzman.

To achieve its aim, the company has recruited new management talent to locate investments - from medical centers in Canada to operations in India and South America (mainly Mexico and Brazil at this stage at least), not to mention mergers and acquisitions.

Though it failed to buy Mills Corp of the U.S., a shopping-mall developer in bankruptcy, based on its ambitions and cash position - Gazit Globe has a major acquisition brewing, the bank surmises.