Bank Hapoalim history

The American Friends of the Histadrut was one of the groups that did invest, and with its help the bank separated amicably from the Zionist Organization in 1925.

From September to November 1935, there was a run on the Palestinian banks when Italy's invasion of Ethiopia provoked widespread fear of war.

1937: Hapoalim sends an emissary to the United States to raise funds from investors.

In May 1939 the mandatory government published a White Paper that curbed the number of Jewish immigrants for the following five years.

Avraham Dickenstein went back to the United States to start Bank Hapoalim's new subsidiary, the American-Palestine Trading Corporation (AMPAL). He arrived on a most inauspicious day--December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Dickenstein, then director of AMPAL, told the New York Times in September 1949 that this campaign had lowered the cost of living by 7.5 percent and eradicated the black market in just six months.

1957: Bank Hapoalim merges with all but one of the remaining savings and loan societies in Israel.

But by 1969 the Bank of Israel had to restrain the commercial banks to handle the shortened supply of capital.

1971: Hapoalim opens its first operating foreign branch, in London.

In January 1985 the Israeli cabinet formed an investigative commission to study the price collapse.

By early 1989 this program had cost Israeli taxpayers $7 billion and left the government as owner of most of the shares.

1993: The Israeli government offers 16.3 percent of the banks' shares to the public.

In 1995, an acquisition effort that included Canada's Claridge Investment Corp. and Ted Arison, formerly associated with the cruise ship company Carnival Lines, collapsed due to fears of impending political upheavals.

The bank was held by the Israeli government until 1996 when it was sold to a group of investors led by Ted Arison.

The final 14.6 percent stake under state ownership was sold through a public offering on June 6, 2000, in a benchmark demonstration of how financial institutions in Israeli society would be returned to private ownership under Ehud Barak's government.

The policies of Israel's central bank underwent some change after the collapse of the small Trade Bank, in 2002, following the revelation of a $50 million embezzlement scandal.