El-Ad Canada makes it onto the TASE with NIS 80 million raised from public

The drama over real estate and energy baron Yitzhak Tshuva's desire to bring his Canadian real estate subsidiary, El-Ad Canada, to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, has ended. The company managed to raise NIS 80 million yesterday, enough to list as a public company even without an order of shares from Elad Tshuva, Tshuva's son.

	Elad Tshuva.

In connection with the public phase of the offering Sunday, NIS 90 million in bids were received.

The problem was that several million of that sum was submitted personally by Elad, for whom the Canadian firm is named.

Since Elad Tshuva unsurprisingly may be considered an interested party for purposes of the initial public offering, the Israel Securities Authority and the TASE were expected to have to determine if the bid is proper and whether to let the IPO proceed. However, under the circumstances, no such ruling is necessary.

Altogether, in the institutional and public phases of the offering, El-Ad Canada managed to secure NIS 270 million, the minimum it needed to trade on the TASE.

The institutional phase of the offering was wrapped up about a week and a half ago on sluggish demand, which ultimately resulted in NIS 180 million in bids.

The original plan was for an IPO based on a market cap of $600 million Canadian, about U.S.$566 million, or 1.5 times the company's shareholder equity. However, Israel's institutional investors did not show great enthusiasm at this level, so a 10% discount was ultimately offered, resulting in a NIS 20 share price at a market capitalization of $540 million Canadian or about U.S. $510 million.