CEO of the foodtech partnership Millennium , Hanan Schneider, is expected to leave the company soon. The official reason is differences of opinion with chairman Guy Rosen, but the heart of the matter is Schneider’s attempt to raise a venture capital fund in the foodtech field, at the same time as Millennium. The investment partnership in foodtech companies, Millennium, is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange at a value of NIS 29 million, after a decline of 43% in the share price in the last year.
Globes learned that Schneider asked to lead a fund of about 100 million dollars whose anchor investors were supposed to be the Harel company and the billionaire Vincent Chingweiss, who is the largest shareholder (14%) in Millennium. Presentations were made to the investors at the beginning of the year, but in the end the project did not come to fruition, due to the changes in the market.
A few weeks ago, the Millennium board learned for the first time that Schneider had contacted these investors, and he was invited to inquire about the matter. In the same conversation, Schneider explained that he had intended to establish a parallel fund for the Millennium, which would operate in cooperation with it, and that in any case it was preliminary contacts that did not come to fruition, and he does not intend to carry them out now.
Millennium and Schneider began negotiations designed to agree on non-compete and cooling-off terms for the CEO, but were unable to reach an agreement, and it was decided that Schneider would leave.
Hype issues – zero exits
Millennium was one of the investment partnerships in young R&D companies issued in Tel Aviv in 2020-2021, against the background of the market’s appetite for investments with a high risk/probability profile and the lack of investment alternatives at that time. The partnerships made investments, but almost none of them had time to make exits or deals that dramatically increase the value of the companies in their portfolio, before market tastes changed sharply. Today, the partnerships are almost all trading at a deep discount to the issue price, with most institutional investors choosing to exit them.
Millennium Foodtech is trading at a value of 85% below the IPO price. Its largest shareholders are, as mentioned, Vincent Chingweiz’s Centros (14%) and Moore Investments (11%). In the company’s portfolio there are actually several assets in the field of foodtech that have attracted public attention in the past: the cultured meat company Alf Farms (1.5% holding) in which the actor Leonardo DiCaprio invested, among others, Tifa in the packaging field and Savorite, which produces plant-based meatballs.