He likes to say that he has now reached that part of life where he spends what he has accumulated in the other part, but Mişa Rotenberg, who lives in two locations - in Romania, where he was born and in Israel, where he made money - told us this weekend, when he inaugurated the mansion of the Ceptura wine caves which he owns ("a hobby", he says - see the article Mihail Rotenberg: "The 2010 winemaking year was zero"; that he will remain active as an investor, in this period of crisis, while applying principles which would help him avoid losses.
"The appetite of the public for innovation has fallen considerably", says Rotenberg, who is himself a promoter of innovation in the area of telecommunication software (he is an automation engineer), as founder of BreezeCOM Ltd (in 1992), who, through a series of mergers, is nowadays part of "Alvarion" Ltd., a company of Tel Aviv, with tens of branches abroad, competing with "Motorola" and "Alcatel".
"People are tired of innovation", Rotenberg says again, "they are going back to the old-school model, the appetite for loans has disappeared, they would rather repay their loans, get them over with and have peace of mind, which leads to a drop in consumption and hits back in the form of the slowdown of economic growth".
The crisis doesn"t leave him indifferent:
"I have a careful investment policy, I focus on sectors which manufacture goods or provide services which are still needed in times of crisis, for instance, cigarettes, drugs, energy and banks; when I"m buying stock I pay attention to choosing companies which have a positive cashflow and which pay out dividends".
In the beginning of August, the solutions of "Alvarion" Ltd. were selected for wireless telephony in Maryland (USA).
FLORIAN GOLDSTEIN (Translated by Cosmin Ghidoveanu)
link: Mihail Rotenberg:"The 2010 winemaking year w
