Migdal Group

Shlomo Eliyahu is the ultimate controlling shareholder through his holding company Eliahu 1959 Ltd., which acquired the stake previously held by Assicurazioni Generali in 2012. The structure is a publicly traded insurance group with a single controlling entrepreneur, creating a hybrid governance model that blends regulated insurer discipline with concentrated owner decision-making.

Migdal uses its balance sheet and captive policyholder capital to write direct checks into Israeli real estate, infrastructure, and global secondaries. Its sourcing advantage comes from being a domestic financial utility in a market where large-scale institutional equity is scarce — developers and project sponsors approach Migdal because few other Israeli institutions can commit multi-decade capital at comparable scale.

Generali was the original founding partner and majority owner of Migdal from its inception in 1934. The Italian insurer maintained control for nearly eight decades before selling its stake to Shlomo Eliyahu in 2012, ending one of the longest-standing foreign ownership arrangements in the Israeli financial sector.

Migdal invests directly. Its portfolio includes the Rav-Bariach factory complex in Ashkelon, land connected to the Jerusalem Light Rail expansion, and additional global real estate projects. The firm prefers direct ownership where it can exercise control and capture illiquidity premiums rather than paying management fees to third-party fund managers.

Migdal operates the Migdal Foundation, which is active domestically in Israel, and maintains a legacy entity called Migdal International Society, Inc. The corporate art collection, housed at the Petach Tikva headquarters, also functions as a cultural asset managed alongside the investment portfolio.

The insurance franchise generates long-duration policyholder liabilities that function as permanent, low-cost capital. Migdal recycles this float into direct real estate, secondaries, and infrastructure credit — an approach that structurally resembles a family office with an embedded insurance balance sheet rather than a conventional third-party asset manager.

Migdal targets mature, income-producing real estate, infrastructure land positions, energy exposure, and secondaries. It does not operate as a venture investor; its capital goes to existing assets with contractual cash flows or structural scarcity, consistent with an insurer's liability-matching requirements under Israeli solvency regulation.