Business in Brief

El Al has ended the sale of its "basic" class tickets, the airline's answer to low-cost flights, saying it was not making money on the deal. The cheap tickets were offered to passengers willing to forgo meals and pay extra for amenities such as checked baggage. El Al said yesterday that "passengers clearly prefer to pay a fixed price and enjoy the entire range of services on a flight. After a trial period, the company decided not to put the pilot into full operation." (Zohar Blumenkrantz)

The Blue Square Square retailer, which runs the Mega supermarket chains, has stopped selling Ferrero Rocher chocolates, Loacker wafer cookies, Mentos mints, Kinder chocolate eggs, and other products imported by Leiman Schlussel. The companies had a falling-out about their terms of business, and a shortage of the sweets is already being felt at Mega stores. Neither Leiman Schlussel nor Blue Square would comment. (Adi Dovrat-Meseritz)

Oops. The male population of northern Israel won't get a chance to buy H&M clothing in the region anytime soon, after the chain realized that the 1,200-square-meter space it leased in the Grand Canyon mall isn't enough to house all its departments - and decided to lose the men, at least at first. Its outlet in Tel Aviv's Azrieli Center, for comparison, is on 2,000 square meters of floor space. The store, scheduled to open in April, will be H&M's third in Israel and the only one in the north. The H&M franchise is owned by the Horesh family, which also imports Toyota and Lexus cars, by the way. H&M declined to comment. (Adi Dovrat-Meseritz)

A class-action motion was filed in court yesterday against the YOU Blue Square-Dor Alon customers club, for allegedly reneging on an advertised promise to give members discounts at Alonit convenience stores at Dor Alon gas stations. Plaintiff Ariel Itzkovich claims that the club's promotional material states that YOU members are entitled to a 10% discount, which led him to do his shopping at Alonit outlets. But he says the store gave him only a 5% discount (and that some give none at all). Alonit management had no answers for him and the Public Trust consumer watchdog group did nothing, he says. He thinks his suit could be worth NIS 50 million. (Rina Rozenberg)

The main obstacle to privatizing the Israel Military Industries is the difference between the severance compensation the workers want and the amount the state is willing to pay. The state is willing to put aside NIS 300 million in compensation severance for 1,050 workers, while the workers want at least NIS 1 billion. The IMI management suggested a compromise of NIS 670 million, but the workers rejected the idea. Meanwhile, management has prepared a five-year plan that treasury officials say would give a potential buyer the security of knowing that the company has a long-term vision. (Ora Coren and Zvi Zrahiya)

A Bank Hapoalim shareholder has sued the bank's former chairman Dan Dankner, the board members and the RP Explorer Master Fund on Tuesday for NIS 88 million, over the affair of the purchase of Turkish bank Pozitif. The plaintiff, Yissachar Rubin, asked the court to approve the suit as a derivative suit, as the bank has already refused to sue Dankner and the board. The sum requested represents the amount Hapoalim paid to RP as compensation in the failed deal. Dankner is under investigation for fraud and breach of trust relating to the Pozitif sale, as well as other suspicions. The banks' lawyer, Pinhas Rubin, said he "did not know the suit had been filed and certainly had never seen it, so he had nothing to comment on." (Amit Benaroia)