The TASE will be effected this week by tomorrow's Winograd committee report and the continued fall in the shekel-dollar rate.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) will open the week with two critical pending events, one political, the other economic, which will determine the direction the market will take. The political temperature in Israel will soar tomorrow, with the publication of the Winograd committee interim report. The report will cover the conduct of the government and IDF command in the days preceding the Second Lebanon War and the initial days of the war itself. The report will likely be sharply and bluntly worded, albeit without drawing personal recommendations.
The public will probably react vehemently to the 300-page report. The country’s political leadership is already under pressure as the State Comptroller delivers suspicions of misconduct by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the Attorney General, and the Ministry of Finance is without a minister. And this is only the tip of the iceberg regarding investigations against the political leadership. Moreover, Governor of the Bank of Israel Prof. Stanley Fischer has been mentioned as a possible new president of the World Bank in the event that Paul Wolfowitz resigns.
The economic factor is the ongoing plunge in the shekel-dollar exchange rate, which is beginning to affect public companies. IDB Holding Corp. Ltd. (TASE:IDBH) subsidiary Discount Investment Corporation (TASE: DISI) was the first large company to publish a profit warning because of this factor.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on April 29, 2007
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