Market perception of Gornitsky & Co's chairman and leading lawyer Pinhas Rubin is that he is one of the country's outstanding lawyers: "Pinhas Rubin is excellent, he's probably the best lawyer in Israel," remarks one competitor. The firm are considered solid performers in all practice areas and have finalised a succession of mandates to support this....
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Market perception of Gornitsky & Co's chairman and leading lawyer Pinhas Rubin is that he is one of the country's outstanding lawyers: "Pinhas Rubin is excellent, he's probably the best lawyer in Israel," remarks one competitor. The firm are considered solid performers in all practice areas and have finalised a succession of mandates to support this.
A highlight deal for Gornitsky's equity capital markets team came in 2010 when the firm acted on the largest IPO of an Israeli company on the Nasdaq that year. Chaim Friedland and Benjamin Waltuch represented SodaStream International on the deal, which had raised the company $125 million when it closed in November 2010.
In the largest IPO by a foreign company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) in 2010, Sharon Werker-Sagy and Ari Fried acted for Elad Canada, the Ontario based subsidiary of Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva's, Elad group on its $75 million IPO.
On the debt side, Zvi Ephrat and Nurit Traurik represented the Israel Corporation in a public offering of more than $285 million of bonds in July 2010. Also, in the first private placement of debt securities on the Israeli institutional market since the new rules, Lior Porat and Meir Levin advised DBS Satellite Services, a private satellite television company, on two private placements of bonds which raised a combined $170 million.
Headed by senior partners Moriel Matalon and the market-recommended Jack Smith and Itay Geffen, the firm's project finance team are unanimously recognised as one of the leaders in the field in Israel and, true to it's reputation, the practise has been involved several of the country's most prominent deals.
Widely considered one of the originators of energy law in Israel, Smith is a client favourite. "I think he's the leader in Israel in terms of energy law, he was the first one here to deal with it. He is excellent; very professional, very experienced," says one.
Recent highlights saw the firm representing a consortium headed by Siemens, Shikun & Binui and Isulux in submitting a $558 million bid for the tender for the Israeli government's solar energy thermal power plant in February 2011. With a capacity of approximately 110MW, it will be the largest solar plant ever built in Israel and the first thermo-solar one. On another deal, Geffen led a team advising Policity, a company owned equally by Shikun & Binui and Binui & Hashmira, on its successful bid for the $500 million tender for the Israeli Police's new national training centre.
On a notable PFI (private finance iniative) project, the infrastructure group mandated the firm to advise on the bid and $195 million financing of a major road rehabilitation project in northern Israel, which closed in July 2010.
In January 2011, Smith and a team closed a deal for OPC Rotem and its sponsors, Israel Corporation and Dalkia Israel. The $558 million project financing for a 440MW private power plant in Israel was secured from a syndicate of banks and institutional lenders, led by Bank Leumi Le'Israel.
In the oil and gas sector Eyal Raz and Elite Elkon May-Tal assisted oil and gas exploration company Isramco Negev secure $750 million in financing in May 2011 for the development of the Tamar offshore gas field, the first greenfield gas discovery in Israel.
Zvi Ephrat, Chaim Friedland, Ari Fried and Tamar Cohen meanwhile were kept busy securing $900 million in debt facilities for the construction and operation of a new hydro-cracking plant for Oil Refineries. The financing consisted of $600 million in loan facilities from a consortium of Israeli financial institutions and $300 million through a US bank.
On the banking side, lead partner Rubin, advised Bank Hapoalim on the refinancing of Memorand and Leviev Groups $2 billion debt agreement, which closed at the end of 2010. Meanwhile, working in parallel with the firm's M&A team, Hagar Alon Windman and several other partners represented Melisron on the acquisition and financing of 70% of the capital stock of British-Israel Investments for approximately NIS1.7 billion ($471 million).
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