Buffett helps raise $80m. for Israel Bonds

Billionaire Warren Buffett helped raise $80 million in Israel Bonds investments at an event last week and a total of $290 m. in the past year and a half. 

By: World Israel News Staff

Billionaire Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most successful, high-profile investors, helped raise $80 million in Israel Bonds investments last week by hosting a dinner reception in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, JTA reported.

At the event at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, some 70 investors from the US and Canada each purchased at least $1 million in bonds.

This was his third such event for Israel Bonds in the past year and a half, which raised a total of $290 million in investments.

“I’ve lived through Israel’s entire 70-year history and I believe it is one of the most remarkable countries in the world,” Buffett said at the event, according to JTA. “I’m delighted to own Israel Bonds.”

“I have nothing but good feelings about what I am doing. The United States and Israel will always be linked. It is a good thing for Israel that there is an America, and it is a good thing for America that there is an Israel,” he added.

Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, bought 18.9 million shares in Teva Pharmaceutical, an Israeli biotech company, last quarter, amounting to a 1.9 percent stake in the company, worth $358 million at the time.

That was not Buffett’s first investment in Israel. His ties to the Jewish state’s economy began in 2006, when Berkshire purchased an 80-percent stake in Iscar, an industrial manufacturing company.

When asked by Forbes in February what it is about Israel that he finds attractive, he said, “I’m not Jewish, but Israel reminds me of the United States after its birth. The determination, motivation, intelligence and initiative of its people are remarkable and extraordinary. I’m a big believer in Israel’s economy.”

Other Israeli companies purchased by Berkshire include eVolution Networks, creators of wireless network energy savings software, Ray-Q Interconnect, a distributor of electronic components and AgroLogic, a designer of electronic control units for agriculture.