Israel Secondary Fund (ISF), a secondary fund that provides liquidity to the private equity and venture capital market by acquiring stakes in Israel, announced on Monday it is in advanced stages of raising $100 million for its second fund, ISF II. The majority of the amount has already been committed in the initial closing, by institutional investors, family offices, and private investors.
ISF, which was founded in 2009, is managed by Dror Glass, Nir Linchevski, and Shmuel Shilo. The fund is raising ISF II following the success of its inaugural fund, ISF I and has $50 million under management. ISF I held direct and indirect stakes in more than 100 private companies, and has already realized 30 exits.
The direct and indirect exits include the acquisition of Waze Ltd. by Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), the IPO of SolarEdge Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: SEDG), the acquisition of SuperDimension by Covidien Ltd., the acquisition of PrimeSense Ltd. by Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), the sale of WorkLight to IBM Inc. (NYSE: IBM), and the recent acquisition of Altair Semiconductor Ltd. by Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE).
Glass shared
“The secondary market has been developing rapidly in the recent years in Israel and it continues to grow at an accelerated pace. Investments of over $30 billion in Israeli funds and technology companies in the past decade have created an Israeli secondary market potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, companies are staying private for longer, and build very significant business activity before going public or being acquired.”
He then added:
“As a consequence, there has been a growing need by entrepreneurs and investors for liquidity in the years preceding an exit. ISF aims to become the preferred liquidity provider for entrepreneurs, executives and investors in the years preceding an exit, and to be a long-term financial partner for the companies and funds in which ISF invests.“