Банк Леуми: История и развитие израильского банка

Israeli bank

Bank Leumi (, lit. National Bank; بنك لئومي) is an Israeli bank. It was founded on February 27, 1902, in Jaffa as the Anglo Palestine Company as subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust (Jüdische Kolonialbank) Limited US, Switzerland, the UK, Mexico, Uruguay, Romania, Jersey, and China. Though nationalized in 1981, now Bank Leumi is mainly in private hands, with the government as the largest single shareholder, with 14.8% of the stock (as of June 2006). The other major shareholders are Shlomo Eliyahu and Branea Invest, which each hold 10% of the stock, constituting the control core of the bank. Sixty percent of the bank's stocks are held by the public and traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

The antecedents of the Jewish Colonial Trust can be traced to Herzl's visionary tract "Der Judenstaat" (lit. "The Jewish State"), detailing his vision of how the Jewish State would be created. A major role was assigned in this vision to a huge body, to be called "The Jewish Company", which would be "founded as a joint stock company subject to English jurisdiction, framed according to English laws, and under the protection of England". In Herzl's vision, this Company would control virtually all the land in Palestine and would take care of transporting there millions of people within a few years – all, or nearly all, Jews living in the world. It would then take care of all the logistics of settling them in their new country, establishing them in urban and rural environments and getting agriculture, trade and industry going. For the Herculean tasks envisioned for it, Herzl estimated that the company's capital should be about a thousand million marks (about £50,000,000 or $200,000,000). In practice, the Zionist movement was completely unable – either politically or financially – to undertake anything of remotely such dimensions. The actual "Jewish Colonial Trust" – established, indeed, in London – was in effect a small scale model of the company envisioned in "Der Judenstaat": its capital a small fraction of the sum envisioned for "The Jewish Company" and its activity limited to transporting and settling small numbers of Jews on whatever limited parcels of land in Palestine the Zionist movement managed to buy. Even so, the "Colonial Trust" had a key role in the actual implementation of the Zionist project, towards eventual creation of Israel.

The Jewish Colonial Trust (German: Jüdische Kolonialbank), predecessor to the present Bank Leumi, was founded at the Second Zionist Congress in Basel and incorporated in London in 1899 as the financial instrument of the Zionist Organization.

The bank's activities in Palestine were carried out by the Anglo Palestine Bank, a subsidiary formed in 1902. The bank opened its first branch in Jaffa in 1903 under the management of Zalman David Levontin. Early transactions included land purchase, imports and obtaining concessions. Branches were opened in Jerusalem, Beirut, Hebron, Safed, Haifa, Tiberias and Gaza. The Anglo Palestine Bank offered farmers long term loans and provided loans to the Ahuzat Bayit association which built the first neighborhood in Tel Aviv. During World War I, the Ottoman government declared the bank, which was registered in England, to be an enemy institution and moved to shut it down and confiscate its cash. In 2011, Bank Leumi acquired Geneva based Banque Safdie SA for CHF 143m. Bank Leumi merged Banque Safdie with Bank Leumi Switzerland Ltd to form Leumi Private Bank in early 2012. Leumi closed its representative office in Melbourne, Australia in October 2013. In July 2014, Bank Julius Baer announced that it had purchased the private banking assets of Bank Leumi. Baer bought Bank Leumi (Luxembourg) S. A., Leumi's private bank in Luxembourg and Leumi will also transfer the clients of Leumi Private Bank to Baer. In July 2019, Dr. Samer Haj Yehia was appointed chairman. Bank Leumi USA, the bank's U. S. subsidiary, was purchased by Valley National Bank in 2022 for US$1.2 billion in cash and stock. In 2023 Pablo Rosenberg and Gal Toren began to serve as presenters of the Bank.

In October 2017, Danish pension firm Sampension banned investment in Leumi alongside three other companies operating in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including Bank Hapoalim, Israeli telecoms firm Bezeq and German firm Heidelberg Cement. On 12 February 2020, the United Nations published a database of 112 companies helping to further Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as in the occupied Golan Heights. These settlements are considered illegal under international law. Bank Leumi was listed on the database on account of its "provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements" and "banking and financial operations helping to develop, expand or maintain settlements and their activities" in these occupied territories. On 5 July 2021, Norway's largest pension fund KLP said it would divest from Bank Leumi together with 15 other business entities implicated in the UN report for their links to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The main branch of Bank Leumi on Jaffa Road, Jerusalem, built during the British Mandate by the German Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn, has been declared a landmark building. The Bank Leumi branch on the corner of Ramban Street in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood, an example of Bauhaus architecture, was designed by the German Jewish architect Leopold Krakauer. It was built in 1935 as a private home, and was renovated in 2007 to restore the original facade.

Luxembourg – Due to the activities of Bank Leumi, David Kalai, and Nadav Kalai, Bank Leumi entered into a deferred prosecution agreement, in December 2014, with the US Department of Justice admitting that it conspired to hide assets and income in offshore accounts. The bank paid a fine of $270 million and turned over more than 1,500 names of its U. S. account holders.