The “Israeli” newspaper has gotten stay of execution. Hirsh Media, owned by Shlomo Ben-Zvi, has promised to pay the employees’ salaries, amounting to NIS 500,000, and publish the paper at least through next Monday. 45% of the salaries have already been paid from the paper’s reserves, at the order of Adv. Muriel Matlon, the paper’s additional manager on behalf of Newsco, owned by Sheldon Adelson, the paper’s co-owner.
The Tel Aviv District Court will hold another hearing on the case on Monday. Until then, Ben-Tzvi and Adelson will negotiate to try to decide which partner will buy the other out. The court today heard Adelson’s NIS 10.7 million lawsuit against Ben-Tzvi for illegally taking money from Israeli News Ltd., the publisher of “Israeli”.
Hirsh Media said today, “Ben-Tzvi has undertaken to pay the outstanding December salaries owed to “Israeli’s” employees, even though the obligation to do so falls on Newsco (owned by Adelson), in order to allow publication of the paper through Monday, and despite reports that the paper will no longer be published.”
Yesterday, sources at “Israeli” predicted that the paper’s final edition would come out today, and that no new edition would be published until the dispute between Adelson and Ben-Tzvi was settled. This was because the paper’s resources had run out. Instead, Ben-Tzvi has undertaken to keep the paper running for at least a few more days.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on January 10, 2007
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