Insights & News

The "Globes" Dun's 100 law firms rankings for 2015, ranks Barnea as experts in: International commercial, high-tech, infrastructure and project finance, litigation and capital markets.

Following last week's elections, "Eched Ha'am" Magazine organized a  real estate experts round table in order to discuss the current real estate crisis, possible solutions and provide a forecast for the future. Ariel Nadler, partner and head of the Real Estate department at Barnea, spoke about market failures, the challenges and weaknesses in the existing solutions.

Barnea, IVC, and SpotOption invite you to "Online Financial Trading NOW" Conference. The conference will deal in opportunities, challenges, innovations and trends in the Online Financial Trading Industry. The event will be held on Tuesday, May 5, 2015, 08:30-13:00 at Meirhoff Gallery, Dovnov 8, Tel Aviv.

360Law website published our Overview Of Gambling Law In Israel. In our overview we provide an analysis of  current laws in Israel and discusses innovations and possible future developments therein.

Election Day in Israel is considered a day off. The employer cannot oblige its employees to work without this day off - except for a series of public services established by the CEC. We were interviewed by Ynet regarding the rights of employees.

Barnea represented Athena SCS Limited, a UK based company, and its shareholders in the sale of the company to NXP Semiconductors NV, a Nasdaq listed company. Athena is an independent UK-based developer of state-of-the art smart card solutions for access, enterprise, eGovernment, transportation, payment and mobile solutions.

Recently, Judge Ruth Ronen of the Economic Department of the Tel-Aviv District Court handed down a ruling on the matter of a tender offer published by Africa-Israel Industries in 2012 for the purchase of shares of Negev Ceramics. 

After seven years of litigation Advocates Zohar Lande and Gal Livshits of Barnea & Co successfully  assisted their clients to defeat a claim of NIS 10m filed by Shragai and Sons Ltd, a contractor, against their clients. The claim related to the high profile Telzstone development near Jerusalem. The claim was dismissed by the Court with costs awarded against the Plaintiff.

Marie Tsion to participate in a Human Resources Managers Forum at the Emek Yezreel Academic College. Marie was lectured about the importance of employment contracts and the way it may influence the position of HR manager in the organization.

Despite the conflict in  Gaza, 2014 was an extremely busy year for Israeli Hitech M&A transactions.
Several partners at leading law firms, including Simon Jaffa, were interviewed by "The Lawyer" to review last year’s results and discuss the technology market.

Milad Aviation Ltd., an Israeli company, is claiming that Royal Jordanian Airlines negotiated in bad faith for many years, delaying the conclusion of a written agreement, and then hijacked the whole venture for themselves. Milad Aviation Ltd, represented by Adv. Zohar Lande, threatens lawsuit of NIS 20 million against Royal Jordanian Airlines. For the full article, please click here

Due to the many regulations, legal advisors and statements of claims, the directors of public companies do not know if it's their job to manage or supervise. Micky Barnea, a renowned figure in this field, was invited to be a member of a panel of experts to discuss the responsibility of the Board of Directors in the new era.

Corporate Live Wire held a Mergers & Acquisition Roundtable  with five experts from around the world, including Simon Jaffa.
The international Mergers & Acquisition experts examined the latest changes and developments in each expert's respective jurisdiction.
The mergers & acquisition roundtable  provides in depth analysis of the latest trends in the M&A arena. This included topics such as the main risks and challenges facing cross-border activity, tax implications and the strength of technology-based investment in Israel.

Recently, one of the most popular Facebook pages in Israel, by the name of "Twitting Statuses", was suspended and later permanently removed by Facebook. The reason for such action was that the operator of that page (the "Operator"), so it is understood, was paid to publish commercial content on that Facebook page, without going through the Facebook advertising system and without providing any due disclosure that such content was indeed paid for. It appears that the Operator offered various media packages to advertisers fixing prices based on different kinds of exposure on this page.

After this manner of operation became public knowledge, Facebook suspended the page and a few days after that permanently removed it. Facebook stated that these actions were taken because the Operator had breached Facebook's terms and conditions. According to Facebook, the Operator received warnings about his manner of operation, but ignored them. Despite the Operator's efforts, which included going public with Facebook's actions and publishing a letter sent from him to the head of the Israeli office of Facebook, his efforts to change Facebook's decision were unsuccessful.

Without getting into the legal spat between Facebook and the Operator, this turn of events proves the importance of following the terms and conditions of Facebook. All of the work and effort of the Operator will probably go down the drain, causing him substantial financial loss and diminution in value in connection with this Facebook page. And this is not something to trifle with - according to newspaper reports, the Operator, prior to this turn of events, asked to receive NIS 10,000,000 (approx. USD 2.5M) for the page and had 700,000 followers (and claimed to reach exposure of millions).

Given the fact that this kind of business lives or dies on the existence of the Facebook page, and that it operates on a platform owned by a third party, it goes without saying that where the business is intended to generate followers and create value without adhering to the terms and conditions of the third party owned platform, it is reasonable to believe that sooner rather than later, such value will dissolve into thin air. Further,  where there are third party investors that are involved in such a business, this could establish a cause of action against the entrepreneur who used their investments for purposes of the business; where such a core fundamental element of the business is questionable, there is a possibility that the investors will seek to recover damages from the entrepreneur.

So, entrepreneurs – pay close attention to the rules of any third party you rely on for the purpose of creating value for your business, failing which , you could expose yourself to financial difficulties on a number of fronts.

On  12 February 2015, Marie Tsion, head of employment law, will participate in the HR Managers Forum of the northern region. The forum includes CEO’s and HR managers of leading companies and meets once a month at the Upper Galilee Regional Council.

The Magistrate's Court in Tel Aviv accepted the claim of "Mika Benroy", a company  owned by Mr. Aviad Caspi, a former business development vice president of Whitewater Holdings. Caspi is also the  son in law of businessman, Edwin (Benny) Tish. Caspi submitted the claim  against  Whitewater Holdings, of which Uri Yogev is the founder and former Chairman of its Board of Directors .

The Magistrate's Court decided that Whitewater Holdings must pay an amount of approximately 127 000 NIS to "Mika Benroy" (Caspi’s company) for services given to Whitewater Holdings, for which no consideration had been paid.

The suit was filed by Adv. Zohar Lande, Adv. Shai Sharvit and Adv. Itay Wigoda from Barnea 

The new amendment to the Notice to Employee will require employers to give written responses to job applicants whether or not they have been hired. The new amendment will take effect at the end of January.

Today, hiring procedures can include a number of in-house interviews, assessment centers and more. Thus the employee recruitment process has become increasingly longer. Candidates often have to wait lengthy periods before receiving a reply from employers and sometimes do not get a reply at all.  Candidates are left with considerable uncertainty regarding the important issue of pursuing a career. The amendment is intended to address these issues.

 

There is no doubt that Israel has a thriving high-tech industry. Israel has developed a high-tech eco-system that encompasses companies at various stages of development. It has also built up an extensive community of investors and development centers of international companies. The high-tech industry in the start-up nation has attracted and is attracting corporate giants from around the world to operate their development centers in Israel. This is done via the acquisition of Israeli companies or as part of a business strategy of creating a presence in Israel.

 

In 2014, the online gambling industry faced many challenges, mainly due to regulatory issues but also due unsatisfactory results in several jurisdictions with the US States of Nevada and New Jersey probably the most disappointing in this respect.
According to our head of gambling practice, 2015 will probably be challenging as well. One reason for this is that the new legislation in England, which came into effect towards the end of 2014, requiring any online gambling operator offering is services in England to operate under an online gambling license issued by the local Gambling Commission, as well as pay a substantial gambling tax. For the full article, please Click here

Adv. Zohar Lande , senior partner and the head of the Litigation department at Barnea, was chosen by the prestigious "CorporateLiveWire " guide to the legal profession as "Lawyer of the year 2014" in Litigation & Dispute resolution in Israel.