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Markets in Brief
By The Marker

As Prisma is unwound, it is ceasing to provide services as a member of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Until now its customers could handle their investments independently, through its facilities. These customers have now received letters advising them that Prisma's stock market membership will be terminated at month-end. If they don't transfer their accounts elsewhere by the end of June, Prisma wrote to its clients, it intends to place the portfolios in trust accounts until the client advises what to do. Actually, most of the portfolios have been moved to other banks and investment banks, but remaining ones haven't been put into trust yet. (TheMarker)

A month after selling most of its holdings in Credit Suisse and locking in NIS 2.2 billion in capital gains, Koor Industries is increasing its stake in the Swiss bank again. Yesterday, Koor, which belongs to Nochi Dankner's IDB group, notified investors that it recently bought 6.9 million shares in Credit Suisse, equivalent to 0.6% of its share capital. The impetus may have been that Credit Suisse stock lost 5% of its value in the last month, reducing its market cap to $50.5 billion. Koor doesn't mention the share prices at which it bought, but assuming it paid roughly the prevailing market prices, it invested about $300 million. Altogether Koor now owns 15.2 million Credit Suisse shares, which is 1.28% of the bank's stock. (Michael Rochvarger)
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Multinational Hutchison Whampoa is trying to expedite the sale of cell phone provider Partner (which does business in Israel as Orange), TheMarker has learned. Hutchinson's representatives in Israel, Amikam Cohen and Dan Eldar, have given interested parties until Wednesday to submit their offers. Ishay Davidi's private equity firm FIMI and Shaul Elovitch's telecom empire Eurocom are known to be mulling the acquisition, as are potential bidders abroad. (Amitai Ziv and Sharon Shpurer)

Venture capital funds seem to be abandoning BioLine, the pharmaceutical company. The Giza fund has sold its rights in an anticipated new offering of shares to existing stockholders. The Pitango venture capital fund may follow suit without selling shares in the company. This follows the resignation of three company directors who opposed the way the new offering was being handled. (Paz Vaysman)

The ratings agency Maalot S&P has left Israel Electric Corporation bonds at AA, but has kept the bonds on a watch list with negative implications. This comes three months after the bond rating was lowered from AA+ with the warning at the time that the rating could drop further. Maalot says the electric company remains on the watch list due to liquidity issues, uncertain electric rates and additional uncertainty in the corporation's internal operations. (Avi Bar-Eli)

A day after announcing the completion of Africa Israel's sale of the Ramat Aviv and Savyonim malls to Melisron, it transpired on Thursday that, in an effort to meet its obligations to bondholders next year, Africa Israel is unloading its interest in a Brickell Ave. property in Miami for about $33 million. The stake is being sold to Florida East Coast Realty at an $37 million loss, most of which has already been written off. (Michael Rochvarger)

Lumenis, which develops laser and light-based medical instruments, has raised about $15 million from existing investors and from a new investor, the Agate Medical fund, run by former health minister Danny Naveh. The prior investors, the Ofer Hi-Tech Group and a group led by Harel Beit-On, contributed $10 million of the sum. The financing was raised to strengthen the firm financially. At the same time, Lumenis, which is traded on the pink sheets, has refinanced its bank debt. (Paz Vaysman)

NetVision has announced board approval to continue raising long-term credit of up to NIS 190 million. For the first quarter of this year, the company had reported long-term liabilities of NIS 115 million, including NIS 30.8 million in obligations to bondholders. A company source noted current favorable credit conditions for NetVision. (Yael Halak)

The market for unrated bonds seems to be freeing up. On Wednesday, the Hanan Mor real estate company issued an additional NIS 27 million in Series B2 bonds. The effective yield on the bonds is 9.8%, reflecting a premium of 9.5% over linked, government-issued Galil bonds of an average life of 2.8 years. Company shares have risen 79% since the beginning of the year. (Michael Rochvarger)

After getting authority in March to defer payment of Elran Investment's series C2 bonds, the company has announced the deferral of payments of interest and principal to July 15 and 29. The trustee in this matter is Discount Bank Trust Company. (TheMarker)
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