When back in 2004 Elliott Broidy, Ron Lubash and Amir Kess announced that they’d raised $800 million for Markstone, a private equity fund they’d founded exclusively to invest in Israel, jaws dropped. Theirs wasn’t the first private equity fund in Israel, but Markstone had funding several times larger than anybody else. The amount was almost too big to believe.
The first question on everybody’s lips was, naturally, who put up the money. The answer? “American pension funds.” Market animals sat down with a thud, picked up their jaws and did some math. They quickly concluded that with management fees of 2% of assets a year, Kess, Lubash and “the American” had it made. For life. They’d be withdrawing $16 million a year, for at least seven years, irrespective of how well the fund did.
Read the full story at HAARETZ.com.
