Aurec Group

"Aurec Group" (from Latin: Aurum - gold, or from Hebrew: עורק - artery), is an Israeli holding company cable and telecom investments established in 1968 by Morris Kahn.^[1]

History

Dapei Zahav building

Aurec Group was founded by Morris Kahn, who immigrated to Israel from South Africa in 1956. Kahn established a yellow pages directory that paved the way for the founding of Amdocs, a customer relationship management and billing software firm for large telecom outfits. Kahn's is now on Forbes list of billionaires.^[2]

Amongst the group's holdings have been Golden Pages (the Israeli Yellow Pages), the former cable television provider Golden Channels (now amalgamated into Hot); an internet service provider named Golden Lines (now merged with Internet Zahav to form 012 Smile); and AIG Golden (a joint venture with the AIG insurance company) and Amdocs, now a leading provider of software and services for billing, customer relationship management (CRM), operations support systems (OSS) to the telecommunications industry.^[3][4]

Arutzei Zahav cable TV logo

In 1999, Aurec sold off its holdings in the Arutzei Zahav cable company to its partners, Eliezer Fishman and Yedioth Ahronoth, for US$40 million. In 2000, Kahn also sold 51.5 percent of the Aurec Group's holdings in Golden Lines (Kavei Zahav ) to Fishman, for $180 million. Also in 2000, Aurec divested itself of its 50 percent holding in Netcom, a smaller provider of data communications networks. The value of the transaction was never revealed, but it is thought that Aurec received about $20 million for its shares.^[4][5]

References