Catherine Ford Editor-at-Large Acuris

Catherine Ford is the Editor-at-Large for the events division of Acuris. She is a consultant editor to event programmes, and engaged in the development of timely editorial content for global corporate finance, M&A and capital markets related conferences and events. She routinely moderates discussion panels at conferences across the region. She has worked for ACuris since early 2002, holding a number of senior editorial roles in the company’s European, US and Asia-Pacific head offices.

Zohar Zisapel Co-founder RAD Data Communications

In 1982, Zohar Zisapel, together with his brother, Yehuda, founded RAD Data Communications, and is regarded as one of the fathers of Israeli hi-tech. In the course of 33 years approximately 40 companies were established, of which eight underwent IPOs, 0 were sold and 10 were closed. Four of these companies – Silicom, RADCOM, Radware, and Ceragon – are still traded on Nasdaq in the U.S.

Before he founded RAD, Zohar served as the director of the Ministry of Defense’s electronic research department. In 1979, he was awarded the Israel Defense Prize. In 1994, he was presented with the Israel Export Award and was named Businessman of the Year. In 1996, he won the Hugo Raminceanu Award for Economics, and in 2001 he was presented with an honorary doctorate by the Technion. In 2013 he was named an Honorary Colleague by the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

Zohar Zisapel holds a bachelors and master degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion. He also holds a master degree in business administration from Tel Aviv University.

Kobi Samboursky Founder and Managing Partner Glilot Capital Partners

Kobi, a serial entrepreneur at heart with over twenty-five years of experience in various technology and investment fields, co-founded Glilot Capital Partners in 2011. Kobi’s vision for Glilot was to provide an environment for a solid partnership and investment model between entrepreneurs and investors.

Kobi brings his previous experience in building businesses and effective execution to his role in Glilot’s portfolio. His contributions have resulted in five exits and a strong portfolio.

Prior to founding Glilot, Kobi founded and successfully exited several technology companies including Lamda Communication Networks (acquired by NICE Systems) and iWeb Technologies (acquired by a Japanese consortium). He was a member of the founding team of Infogear Technologies, the creator of the original iPhone (acquired by Cisco).

Kobi served as an Officer in an Elite IDF technology unit.

Ran Hai Partner - Corporate, Capital Markets and Securities HFN

Ran has substantial experience in all aspects of domestic and cross border mergers and acquisitions, investment and joint venture transactions. He has advised on several of the largest M&A and corporate transactions to take place in Israel in recent years, involving both local and major foreign companies, including multi-nationals.

Ran also represents on a regular basis some of the largest private equity and venture capital funds in their portfolio investments and provides ongoing corporate and transactional advice to a number of the firm’s leading clients.

Ran previously worked in the corporate department at the London offices of Freshfields, Bruckhaus, Deringer, where his practice focused on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, dispositions and private-equity transactions

Yuval Cohen Founder and Partner StageOne Ventures

Prior to founding StageOne, Yuval was a General Partner with Israel Infinity Fund, a $100 million information technology fund, where he was in charge of the Communications Sector.

Before that, Yuval served as Vice-President of ISAL, an investment company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

With track record of over two decades in venture capital, Yuval played an integral role in helping startup management teams recruit key employees, develop strategies, and establish partnership agreements.

As an early stage investor and chairman/director, he was personally involved in several successful companies which either went public or were acquired in M&A transactions, including: Traffix Communications Systems Ltd.,

acquired by F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV), Guardium Inc., acquired by IBM Corporation (NYSE:IBM), cVidya Networks, acquired by Amdocs Ltd. (NASDAQ: DOX), Oversi Networks, acquired by Allot Communications (NASDAQ: ALLT),

Corrigon, acquired by eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), Appoxee, acquired by Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) and Radwiz Ltd., acquired by Terayon (NASDAQ: TERN).

Rutie Adar Director, Head of Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center Samsung

Rutie Adar has been heading Samsung’s Strategy and Innovation Center, Israel since 2013. She has been the main focal point for startups, mature companies and academia to explore potential collaborations with Samsung’s innovation platforms. Some of these collaborations included equity investments of Samsung Catalyst Fund.

Rutie has been working in the consumer semiconductors industry during the past 28 years. She started her career developing image processing and parallel processing algorithms. In the past 20 years Rutie held various managerial positions in marketing, strategy, planning and business development. She joined Samsung in 2010 for technology sourcing for Samsung’s component business.

She has B.S. and M.S. in mathematics and computer science from the Hebrew University Jerusalem and MBA from Tel Aviv University.

Rutie has passion for studying and holds B.A. in political science and international affairs and recently she finished her M.A. in political communications at Tel Aviv University which will be her fifth degree.

Catherine Ford Editor-at-Large Acuris

Catherine Ford is the Editor-at-Large for the events division of Acuris. She is a consultant editor to event programmes, and engaged in the development of timely editorial content for global corporate finance, M&A and capital markets related conferences and events. She routinely moderates discussion panels at conferences across the region. She has worked for ACuris since early 2002, holding a number of senior editorial roles in the company’s European, US and Asia-Pacific head offices.

Yoni Assia Founder & CEO eToro

Yoni Assia is the CEO of eToro, the world’s largest social investment network. He has shown an interest in finance and computer science since his youth and so decided to merge his passions. It was this very passion along with the social revolution, which led to the founding and development of eToro’s investment network, where users connect, share, trade and invest in the world’s financial markets. Yoni is as passionate about his business, as he is for his family, wife plus 4 kids, which often results in excessive use of the word awesome, and hi-fives around the office. It’s this young CEO’s vision to disrupt the old banking industry and replace it with a new online transparent and social financial system for the benefit for everyone. Yoni is a member of the YPO, and was included by Financial News in its prestigious Fintech 40 ranking and by City A.M. as a Fintech 100 top influencer. Yoni holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Management and an MSC in Computer Sciences

Catherine Ford Editor-at-Large Acuris

Catherine Ford is the Editor-at-Large for the events division of Acuris. She is a consultant editor to event programmes, and engaged in the development of timely editorial content for global corporate finance, M&A and capital markets related conferences and events. She routinely moderates discussion panels at conferences across the region. She has worked for ACuris since early 2002, holding a number of senior editorial roles in the company’s European, US and Asia-Pacific head offices.

Vikas Sehgal Global Head of Auto & Executive Vice Chairman - South and South East Asia Rothschild

Vikas has over 20 years of experience in the Automotive sector across the US, UK, Germany, Italy, China and India

Significant experience dealing with a broad spectrum of issues related to the automotive, manufacturing and related industries

Originated and executed large automotive mandates worth over $30 billion in the last two years, including deals with companies like VW, PSA, Volvo, Geely and Aston Martin

Prior to joining Rothschild, Vikas was a Managing Director and Global Partner for the Automotive industry with Booz & Company, a global strategy consulting company

Prior to becoming an industry consultant, he was a Product Development Engineer with Ford Motor Company based in Detroit, US and Cologne, Germany

Vikas started his career as a quality control engineer with Daewoo Motors in India and Korea

Hanan Haviv Head of Hi-Tech Department HFN

Hanan's practice focuses on corporate and securities law with an emphasis on mergers and acquisitions and representation of technology and life science companies ranging from start-ups to established public companies and venture capital firms.

Hanan represents companies at all stages of the corporate life-cycle,from pre-incorporation planning to venture capital financing's to mergers and acquisitions, primarily focusing on the formation and financing of emerging growth companies and the representation of venture capital funds in their investments.

As part of his M&A practice, Hanan has represented companies in acquisition transactions involving some of the world's most active players, including transactions with companies like IBM,Oracle,Cisco,Microsoft,Abbott,AOL and McAfee.

Hanan is also experienced in advising public companies regarding SEC reporting and corporate governance matters.

Omer Keilaf CEO Innoviz

Omer has spent over 18 years driving cutting edge technologies from inception to commercialization. Before founding Innoviz, Omer led the system and product definition efforts at Consumer Physics, building the world’s first handheld molecular sensor for mobile devices. Previous roles include leading the system architecture and engineering teams at bTendo (acquired by ST Micro) and Anobit (acquired by Apple). Omer spent 7 years in the elite technological unit of the Intelligence Corps of the Israel Defense Forces, where he served in leading and critical roles involving large scale technological systems. He holds a BSc and MSc in Electrical Engineering and an MBA, all from Tel Aviv University.

Marc Gaffan Chief Business Officer Nexar

Marc Gaffan is a successful CEO, Business leader and entrepreneur. With focus on building and scaling companies, Marc has led startups to become industry leaders with thousands of worldwide customers.

Marc is the Chief Business Officer for Nexar, where he leads Sales, Marketing, Biz-Dev, Customer success and field operations. Prior to Nexar, Marc was Co-Founder and later CEO of Incapsula, a Global Application Delivery Service that protects and accelerates websites, SaaS platforms and other digital infrastructure. Marc Co-Founded Incapsula in 2009 and after its acquisition by Imperva, led the Incapsula business to $100M run rate, protecting millions of websites worldwide and many of the world’s largest enterprises and Telcos.

Prior to founding Incapsula, Gaffan was director of Product Marketing at RSA, EMC's security division, where he was responsible for strategy and go to market activities of a $500M IT Security product portfolio.

Prior to RSA, Marc was responsible for Product management for Cyota, a cyber security and payment authentication cloud company, protecting over 100 million online users, acquired by RSA Security for $145M.

Gaffan started his career as a developer and product manager focusing on internet applications, wireless network optimization and application security. He is a thought leader on application security and distributed denial of service (DDoS) and has appeared before the US Congress, FDIC and Federal Trade Commission on cyber security and identity theft topics.

Doron Gurevitz Managing Director, Head of Israel Rothschild & Co

Doron is the Head of the Israel of Rothschild Global Financial Advisory. Prior to joining Rothschild, Doron served as an investment banker in UBS, and prior to that, Doron served as an advisor in the Prime Minister’s Bureau. Doron holds a BA in Business Administration, graduated with Dean’s honors, and a LLM in Commercial Law

Rothschild has a strong presence in Israel. The Israel team, based on-the-ground in Tel Aviv, is highly connected to local markets and advises Israeli clients on both domestic and cross-border M&A, restructuring, and equity and debt financing. Recent transactions include many of the country’s largest and most high-profile, including Intel’s $15.3bn acquisition of Mobileye, the €1.5bn sale of Keter Group, Israel Chemicals’ €250m strategic asset disposal, US-listing IPOs of Israeli companies as Kamada and Mediwound, London-listing IPO of Matomy, and debt and equity financing advice for Teva totalling $27.8bn.