On Monday, the candidates for the position of management of the Companies Authority appeared before the search committee for the interview phase. From them, three final candidates were selected: Adv. Michal Rosenbaum, Guy Smet and Eva Medjibouz. Among them, Lieberman will choose who will hold the position of more than 70 government companies.
The two candidates who were marked as leaders from the beginning of the procedure – Adv Michal Rosenbaum andOh Madjibouz Qualified as expected. Rosenbaum, 46, owns a law firm and serves as the legal advisor to the Association of Municipal Corporations. Medjibouz, 51, ended her term as director general of the Authority for the Advancement of Women this month. She previously served as chair of the Second Authority for Television and Radio and at the same time served as a director at the Israel Post. The other candidate who reached the finish line is Guy Samet, director of the Natural Resources Administration at the Ministry of Energy and former director general of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
Privatization of the post office, the port and the aerospace industry
According to sources involved in the details, potential candidates were initially prevented from applying for the position following reports and gossip, according to which Lieberman already has a preferred candidate – Michal Rosenbaum.
Among the challenges facing the candidate to be selected are the privatizations of the Israel Post, the Port of Haifa and the issuance of IAI. Additional tasks placed on the board of directors, behind which there has not been a permanent director for a year and three months, will be the improvement of recent government company indices, and the staffing of the missing boards.
By law, state-owned companies must act in accordance with the standards of business companies, including striving for profitability and taking care of the interests of shareholders, namely the state and the public. From companies to become more efficient.
Although government companies are not ordinary companies – they have national goals, which sometimes require the allocation of resources even if the profit at the end is not necessarily economic. But a glance at the dividend distribution index of companies to the public is enough to understand that there is more work to be done.
According to a circular from the Authority, the dividend distribution policy should be at least 50% of the companies’ profits. According to the latest data published by the Authority for 2020, the total dividend declared was only NIS 44 million in all government companies combined – a ratio of only 1.5% to net profit.
The difficulties in the PA began even before it was left without a head, when the state ran between one election campaign and another, without an orderly state budget and in the midst of an economic crisis that the Corona landed. This situation has stalled privatization and IPO measures, and they are now expected to seize a significant chunk of the time of whoever enters the office of the PA director.
As mentioned, whoever chooses will have to deal with the complex steps of privatizing the post office, which is expected to be accompanied by mass layoffs of at least a thousand employees. Equally complicated is the situation in the port of Haifa, where the sale of state shares was supposed to end a long time ago. Meanwhile, the IAI issuance is also stuck, with it not at all clear how much Defense Minister Bnei Gantz and the company’s appointed chairman, Amir Peretz, are interested in it. Issuances in other companies may contribute not only to raising capital but also creating high transparency Value and present the financial statements.
In addition, the new director is also expected to work in the field of transportation companies, such as around the struggles between the chairmen and the managements of Israel Railways and Netivei Israel, or the significant difficulties of NATA in establishing the purple and green lines that seek to handle government ministries.
Ilan Pelto, CEO of the Association of Public Companies, told Globes that it is advisable to have as few government businesses as possible, as the government fails in business operations. “The government has difficulty separating businesses and agendas,” he argued. Business for glory. The role of the state is to determine the rules in which businesses operate and not to conduct business. “
Palto also criticized the Companies Authority for appointing government companies: “The Authority should ensure that the appointments of officers, directors and managers are of the best in their field. Unfortunately, despite real attempts, it fails in this role and there is political intervention.”
Five years without a team of directors
Today, the boards of directors of government companies are half empty. They have about 300 directors, and another 300 missing directors. The Authority is currently ranking the candidates who approached the new team, from which 1,100 candidates will be selected who will form the basis for staffing the companies in the coming years.
The fact that a new team has not been formed for five years has eroded its status. The previous teams from 2015 and 2017 are still in force, but government ministers have asked in recent months to make a number of appointments other than members of the team. Among them, Amir Peretz in IAI, whose appointment was first rejected by a committee to examine senior appointments. The government circumvented the committee’s decision and approved the appointment nonetheless. The committee also rejected the appointment of Amy Palmor, whom Energy Minister Karin Elharar wanted to appoint as chairman of the Electric Company. Almost four months have passed since then, and now Elharar has decided to appoint Dov Bahrav to the post.
About 70 candidates applied for the position of candidate for the position of director of the Companies Authority, of whom about 40 were disqualified by the Civil Service Commission. However, the discussion of the search committee in the case of the 30 approved candidates was postponed at the last minute. As revealed in Globes, the day before the search committee was to convene to discuss the candidates, committee chairman Ram Blinkov abruptly resigned. The discussion took place this week, with the new chairman Ilan Shochat.