With most Israeli M&A involving hi-tech, it was interesting to note that an old brick and mortar retailer, Sears Holdings, decided to ante up for an Israeli company.  Sears basically saved the Israeli start-up Delver Ltd. by purchasing the company. Delver has had trouble raining new money and was on the verge of collapse.

According to Globes: “Delver co-founder and CEO Liad Agmon will move to the US and become a VP at Sears. Delver’s employees will continue to work in Israel and the company will operate as a Sears’ development center. Delver will continue development of its search engine that improves the relevancy of web search results by prioritizing these results based upon the searcher’s social network, as well as new products.The acquisition fits in with Sears’ policy to get into online services. As part of the retailer’s restructuring in early 2008, it reorganized into five relatively independent units: operating businesses, support, brands, e-commerce, and real estate. Sears chairman Edward Lampert is the owner of hedge fund ESL Investments Inc., which controls the company. ”

Nice to know that even old brand names like Sears, like to go shopping in Israel.

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There is no topping Israeli ingenuity, and at the recent Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona, once again an Israeli company showed why. Emoze, one the title for best new email application. According to Ynet: “Emoze developed a push mail application that allows users to receive emails to their mobile devices in real time. Once an email account has been defined, the application automatically updates the email inbox on the cellular phone, without any action on the side of the user. A similar application exists for Blackberries. This new development gives similar capabilities to most cellular devices. The basic service is accessible for free and supports one email account. There is also a pay version that offers the option to connect to multiple email accounts simultaneously.”

This could create competition for the Blackberry, as it will enable users to perform similar functions on the cell phone.

Congratulations on the award.

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Looking for bit of irony? How about the fact that at the same time South African(SA) ports are boycotting Israel and refusing to unload cargo, the Israeli security firm, Nice Systems, has signed a deal to protect 5 more SA ports.

Globes reports: “The Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) intends to ask the International Transport Workers’ Federation to help bring about an end to the boycott imposed on Israeli ships by port workers in South Africa. “The union in South Africa is against anything connected to Israel, and in the past even objected to a cooperation agreement we signed with the Palestinian transport workers union,” explained Transport Wokers Union chairman Avi Edri.”

That in itself is pretty bizarre, since Israel is pretty much the only middle east country with such a developed labor union system, and their brothers in arms have sold them out!

News also broke today, “Transaction analysis firm NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE) has extended its video surveillance technology deal to protect five additional South African port terminals. Transnet Port Terminals, the largest cargo terminal operator in South Africa, is expanding NICE’s IP video surveillance environment at Durban Car Terminal and Ngqura, for a total of five port terminals.”

So let me understand. We need to boycott Israel because of the recent war with Hamas, yet when it comes to protecting your own territory with video surveillance, Israel will do just fine. So let me understand. We need to boycott Israel because of the recent war with Hamas, yet when it comes to protecting your own territory with video surveillance, Israel will do just fine?

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What would you say if I told you that there was a company that developed GPS-like technology for the human body? You’d probably say that that is really cool. Well leave it to Israeli ingenuity and creativity to create such a cutting-edge technology. In fact it’s such an interesting technology that St. Jude Medical(STJ) has bought the Israeli company for $300m.

In a market with very little M&A, this makes 2 acquisitions of Israeli companies in as many months. Johnson & Johnson(JNJ) bought Omrix Biopharmaceuticals(OMRI) as well. This shows that multi-nationals would rather outsource their R&D than develop it in-house. if this trend continues, it could get very interesting for Israeli hi-tech.

MediGuide was founded in 2000 by Gera Strommer, president and CEO, and Uzi Eichler, vice president technology, as a spin-off from Elbit Systems (Nasdaq: ESLT), which owns 41.3% of the company, and with backing from Israeli venture capital fund Vitalife.

According to Globes: “MediGuide has developed technology and products for minimally invasive navigation and tracking within the human body. Its devices are for use in cardiac procedures and catheterization. The system consists of sensors mounted on a catheter introduced into the body, with the locating done on the basis of the distance of the sensors from several sources of magnetic radiation, with an accuracy of fractions of a millimeter.

The information from the sensors is combined with an image of the interior of the body, in a way that is similar to the way locating using a GPS device works. Since in catheterization or other invasive procedure, the human body undergoes changes, the device measures physiological indications from the body breathing, EKG, and so on and amends the picture accordingly.”

What will they think of next?

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