Israel

Renault SA, France’s second-biggest carmaker, is ending a five-year partnership with Better Place LLC after the operator of electric-vehicle charging stations announced plans to shut down, Bloomberg reported. Better Place filed a motion for liquidation with an Israeli court yesterday after failing to attract new investments, according to a company statement. Renault and Better Place began working together in 2008 and said a year later that they aimed to sell 100,000 of the Fluence ZE, the French carmaker’s first electric vehicle, in Israel and Denmark by 2016.

The Israeli government was debating the final points of a two-year austerity budget early Tuesday that would cut spending and raise taxes, outraging many Israelis who voted in a new government this year after promises of economic relief, the International Herald Tribune reported. Even before the new government’s first budget was approved, 12,000 Israelis took to the streets Saturday night in a show of anger reminiscent of the vast social protests that rocked the nation in the summer of 2011.

Nochi Dankner, the chairman of debt-ridden Israeli conglomerate IDB Holding Corp, won a key battle in a fight with bondholders, with a Tel Aviv court allowing Dankner to keep control of the company albeit with outside supervision, Reuters reported. Many of the companies IDB owns have been hard hit by a combination of slowing economic growth and increased competition. IDB Development, a unit of IDB Holding Corp , owes nearly 6 billion shekels ($1.7 billion) in total debt and its bondholders have charged that the company should be declared insolvent and cannot pay its debts.

Israel's only rehabilitation and training center for the blind and sight-impaired will be sent into receivership, the Haifa District Court said yesterday after the government refused to cover the nonprofit organization's NIS 11 million deficit, Haaretz.com reported. Sources at Migdal Or (Tower of Light ) told Haaretz the operating expenses for the center and its various units are higher than what the state is willing to invest. The center, located in Kiryat Haim near Haifa, is operated on behalf of the Social Affairs Ministry at an annual budget of NIS 14 million.

A Tel Aviv court has appointed a receiver for the Israeli rough diamond trader Stelman, the Israel Diamond Exchange reported. Stelman’s bank debts are reportedly over $20 million. Stelman is a family-owned company with headquarters in Antwerp. According to reports, it is currently striving to reach debt settlements. Stelman was a major Diamond Trading Company (DTC) sightholder and a leading rough diamond trader. According to reports, aside from a debt of $5 million to Erez Daliyot, no Israeli diamond companies are owed money by Stelman.

The board of Vita-Galilee Fruit Ltd. (Vita-Pri Galil) filed with the Haifa District Court an objection to receivership and foreclosure of the liens filed by Bank Leumi and Israel Discount Bank, Globes Online reported. The company and its subsidiaries will also convene shareholders and creditors' meetings to submit to them a recovery plan. Vita entered into receivership when Bank Leumi and Discount Bank refused to again postpone repayment of the company's debts. On Friday, receivers were appointed to the company after Bank Leumi and Discount Bank filed an ex parte request with the court.