A Brooklyn-based real estate company owned by members of the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Satmar community completed its first bond placement on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on Monday.
Noble Assets, owned by Joel and Shaindy Schwartz, will be raising 360 million shekels through bonds that bear interest of 6.75%, without securities and with a relatively low rating of BBB+.
Some 304 million shekels are being bought by institutional investors, including four of Israel’s five largest insurance companies. The company thus becomes the 27th U.S. real estate firm to have bonds traded in Tel Aviv.
The large Satmar sect includes has tens of thousands of followers worldwide, the majority of them in the New York areas.
Since 2006, the community has been divided into two factions, led by rival brothers and rabbis Aron and Zalman Teitelbaum.
Members of both sects are anti-Zionist, believing that it is sacrilege to create a Jewish state before the arrival of the Messiah.
