Israel-Hamas War 2023/ screenshot
J.P. Morgan Chase just gave Israel Startup Nation a Huge thumbs up as the country is still embroiled in the war against Hamas in Gaza after more than three months of fighting. The American banking giant is still backing Israel as a high-tech and investment center.
First, J.P. Morgan announced plans to expand its Israel Tech Center Located in Herzliya. And this at a time when major American firms like Google and HP are making layoffs.
But possibly as important, J.P. Morgan is still depending on Israel for its trading platform.
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Nir Shahaf, Head of J.P. Morgan’s Israel Tech Center, told Calcalist“, This is an extremely central platform for J.P. Morgan overall. All the traders in J.P. Morgan all over the world are trading and relying on these systems to process the trades. These systems take care of all the regulatory reporting and risk management and ensure traders know what they’re doing is right and they’re making the right decisions… everything is run on top of this platform.”
This is a really big deal for Startup Nation Israel. It comes as three major firms, including America’s HP Indigo announced huge layoffs over the past 24 hours.
Yet, like many others, J.P. Morgan is still expressing concern about Israel’s economy in the near future due to the ongoing war in Gaza. For example, tourism is a major part of the country’s economy and it has not yet recovered at all, with most foreign airlines still refusing to restore their flights to Israel. And several hundred thousand Israelis have been in reserve duty for the past few months putting a strain on the economy.
In November J.P. Morgan predicted that Israel will see a budget deficit of about 4.5% of GDP in both 2023 and 2024.
And J.P. Morgan also expressed concerns about what would happen should the war continue into 2024, as it clearly is.
“In a more negative scenario (a conflict that lasts until mid-2024and without American aid),” said J.P. Morgan at the time. “We fear that the deficit may reach higher levels. Looking beyond the crisis period, military expenditures may remain high in the coming years as well. But this will be less ‘pressing’ from the point of view of financing the (immediate) deficit.”
