Banking & finance: study & revision guides
June 2015
Looking Back at the Israeli Banking System, 1965 – 2012
A collection of articles and papers on developments and policy issues, relating to the Israeli banking system
by Prof. Meir Heth
This book, published recently by Rubin Mass Ltd, is a collection of articles and papers on developments and policy issues, relating to the Israeli banking system, written over a period of more than four decades by Professor Meir Heth. Heth held key positions in the Israeli capital markets. He was Superintendent of Banks with the Bank of Israel, chairman of the board of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, of Bank Leumi and of other major Israeli corporations. Israel was born in 1948, and its banking system was quite primitive in the early years. Heth, who started in the research department of the Bank of Israel in 1962, wrote several articles that are essential to the understanding of the factors that shaped the structure and business of Israeli Banking for decades to come. Among these are the methods of the Bank of Israel's monetary policy, widespread linkage of financial assets, the legal ceiling of the rate of interest and the deep intervention of the government in the working of the financial markets. Along the years the system has undergone several crises. Heth was actively involved in some of them and he devoted several papers to the issues involved. He criticized sharply for years the policy pursued by the banks of regulating their shares' prices. Following the crisis that led to a de facto nationalization of the four major banks Heth dealt in several articles with the process of reprivatizing the banks. Over the years, many banking institutions disappeared, some were declared insolvent but many more were acquired by the big banks, a process that shaped the concentrated structure of the system. Heth devoted several articles to the bankruptcy of the Israel British Bank, an event that occurred during his tenure as superintendent and had political and international repercussions. The liquidation of the bank and its British subsidiary lasted over 30 years Several articles and papers were dedicated to important policy issues: The conflict of interests involved in the banks' securities business and ways to tackle the problem, the establishment of a formal system of deposit insurance and the need of overhauling the Law of Banking in order to establish a coherent system of bank regulation. This book will be of interest to followers of the Israeli economy and to scholars following the development of banking in emerging markets.
