insights

By Reuters and TheMarker

Asseco Poland, Europe’s fifth-biggest software group, is acquiring 51% of software group Formula Systems from Emblaze. For Warsaw-listed Asseco, the acquisition provides an entry to new markets. For Emblaze, it represents a premium over Formula’s present market cap. The deal, worth up to $145 million, follows Asseco’s buying spree, which it used to more than double sales to nearly $1 billion in two years. The deal remains contingent on approval by Emblaze shareholders, who will convene to discuss it before the end of November. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/emblaze-sells-formula-systems-to-asseco-1.312209

by Koby Yeshayahou

by Globes’ correspondent

by Shiri Habib-Valdhorn

Sources inform ”Globes” that CheckCap Ltd., which is developing a sonar-based pill imaging device for early colon cancer detection, is considering an IPO on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Another company, Given Imaging Ltd., developer of the PillCam endoscopic camera, is one of Israel’s most successful biomedical companies. CheckCap wants to raise tens of millions of shekels at a company value of $100 million. The company does not rule out other ways of raising capital, including an IPO in the US, or a financing round from private investors and equity funds. The company has already met with Israeli and foreign underwriters. http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000586222&fid=1725

by Globes’ correspondent

3M Corporation will acquire Tel Aviv-based Attenti Holdings SA for $230 million in cash, from an investor group led by Francisco Partners. Attenti Holdings was formally Dmatek Ltd., which was traded on the London Stock Exchange, before its acquisition in 2009. The company develops and manufactures remote people monitoring technologies, in other words, electronic ankle bracelets. The acquisition should be closed in the fourth quarter. The company’s products can be used monitor a person’s whereabouts, such as parolees or people with Alzheimer’s disease. Attenti has 340 employees in Tel Aviv, at three sites in the US at Tampa, Milwaukee and Naperville in Illinois, and at Sydney, Australia, and Plovdiv in Bulgaria. The company estimates that its sales will reach $100 million this year. http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000585398&fid=1725

by Karin Kloosterman

LunGuard’s first product is a peristaltic feeding tube that is capable of preventing reflux and is expected to significantly lower the occurrence of VAP (Ventilator Associated Pneumonia) in ventilated patients. To prevent reflux and infection, the feed rate is set at moderate, which is often slower than what a patient actually needs. And generally, no one monitors what’s happening during the four or five hours following feeding, Ofer Pintel,  LunGuard’s co-founder and CEO explains. “Our solution can give information about peristaltic motion and the sphincter at the entrance of the stomach. We know that secretions crawl up to the respiration tract. Our solution prevents reflux continuously, and it’s safe. We are not just blocking the esophagus, but use a unique motion and balloons and a special feeding technology.” http://www.israel21c.org/201008298227/health/preventing-pneumonia-and-saving-billions

by David Shamah

In an Internet age, investors are more or less at the mercy of media analysts, experts, bloggers and others expressing their opinions about, for example, how a news story will affect the price of a stock. To get a handle on the aggregate of these opinions – known as ‘the sentiment’ – that affects the way a specific stock or investment sector is perceived, an Israeli start-up called Sentigo has developed powerful algorithms, large databases, and superior search and sort tools. Sentigo co-founder Gadi Shvadron tells ISRAEL21c that his company keeps an ear to the Net, and analyzes every scrap of public information that can affect share prices. With Sentigo, he says, it is now possible to parse through huge amounts of opinion and translate it into sentiment that is quantifiable or can be manipulated. This transforms the sentiment into a tool investors can deploy when deciding how, where, and even whether or not, to invest. http://www.israel21c.org/201008308255/technology/getting-a-handle-on-web-chat-that-affects-your-stocks

by Dub Ben-Gedalyahyu

French carmaker Renault SA has begun fields tests in Israel of the electric car for Shai Agassi’s Better Place LLC. Marketing of the cars is due to begin next year. Two prototypes of the Renault Fluence ZE, tailored for Israel, arrived last month, together with a company technical team. The cars have the rapid battery replacement system located in the rear. Until now, only prototypes with the fixed battery or replaceable battery, which Better Place developed itself, have arrived in Israel. The timing of the test was determined in part to test the cars’ handling in Israel’s extreme summer heat. The cars are also due to participate in a system-wide test that Better Place will conduct shortly. http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000583344&fid=1725

by Dana Blankenhorn

GE Healthcare signed a strategic partnership to bring cardiovascular Computed Tomography (CT) technology from start-up Arineta Ltd. of Israel to the hospital market. (Heart image from GE Healthcare.) CT has been around for four decades but is only now capable of imaging the heart quickly enough to provide freeze-frame images of the muscle in action. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/healthcare/ge-to-get-its-heart-tech-from-israel/3950

by Guy Grimland

The Kfar Sava-based startup N-trig will provide the touch-screen technology for the tablet computer that Taiwanese manufacturer HTC is developing as direct competition for Apple’s iPad. The so-called gPad will be rolled out in the United States in November by global search engine, email, book depository, you name it colossus Google, in cooperation with the U.S. telecommunications company Verizon. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/htc-taps-israeli-technology-for-its-ipad-slayer-1.309429