Poalim Equity

Dror Nagel serves as CEO of Poalim Equity and leads the unit's investment strategy and execution. Investment decisions are made internally by the Poalim Equity team, subject to the risk and governance frameworks of Bank Hapoalim. The unit operates with a permanent-capital mandate drawn from the parent bank's balance sheet.

Poalim Equity is not a fund — it is a proprietary direct-investment division inside Bank Hapoalim. It deploys the bank's own balance-sheet capital rather than third-party LP commitments. This gives it a permanent-capital structure with no fundraising cycle and no fixed investment-period constraints.

Deal flow originates primarily through Bank Hapoalim's corporate banking relationships, which cover a substantial portion of mid-to-large Israeli companies, and through the bank's technology-sector commercial teams. Poalim Equity also co-invests alongside global venture and private equity firms that lead rounds in Israeli companies, often serving as the local institutional anchor in syndicated late-stage financings.

Poalim Equity operates on a direct-investment model, taking equity and quasi-equity positions in individual companies. It does not publicly market a fund-of-funds program or LP commitments to external managers. The mandate is concentrated on direct balance-sheet deployment into growth-stage Israeli technology firms.

The group structures both straight minority equity and convertible or quasi-equity instruments, including preferred shares and convertible loans. Because it sits inside a commercial bank, it can also bundle growth capital with working-capital credit facilities, foreign exchange services, and trade finance — creating a combined equity-plus-banking relationship that pure-play venture firms cannot replicate.

Poalim Equity sits alongside but separately from Bank Hapoalim's third-party asset management and wealth arms — historically including Psagot Investment House and Hapoalim Capital Markets. Those entities manage external client assets; Poalim Equity exclusively manages proprietary principal investments for the bank's own account.

Because Poalim Equity is a proprietary balance-sheet investment unit of a publicly traded bank, it does not raise third-party funds and therefore does not report AUM in the sense that a standalone private-equity firm would. Capital available for deployment is governed by internal Bank Hapoalim allocation decisions and regulatory capital requirements, not by fund closes or LP reporting.