Comverse is giving up on its dream to build an Israeli headquarters complex on land it owns in the Ra'anana industrial zone.
Comverse is now attempting to sell the about 40-dunam plot through an online Internet sale. The land's estimated value is about $500-600 per square meter of construction, or about $45 million in total.
Comverse's Ra'anana property has seen a number of upheavals in recent years. The land was bought about 10 years ago for $20 million, with the intention of building Comverse's Israeli headquarters campus, a grandiose plan of former CEO, and now fugitive, Jacob (Kobi) Alexander.
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The plan was to gather all the various Comverse offices together into a single complex. Two years ago Comverse held a closed tender for building the 90,000 square meter campus, and a number of construction companies took part. The winner was Minrav.
Since then, the options backdating scandal at Comverse has blown up, as well as other fraud charges, and Alexander has fled to Namibia to avoid federal prosecution in the U.S. Therefore, it seems that with all the trouble the company is facing, the plans have been put on hold, and Comverse has been negotiating for months with a number of parties to sell the property. However, none of this has led to a deal.
The proposed Internet pricing deal does not commit Comverse to sell either.
Today Comverse leases eight buildings in Tel Aviv's Ramat Hahayal neighborhood, an area with a high concentration of high-tech companies. The space rented totals about 55,000 square meters. The rental contracts are scheduled to end in the next three years, and the original plan was for Comverse to leave Ramat Hahayal at that time for its new Ra'anana headquarters. Now the company is expected to renew its various leases in the area instead.
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