The Trade Bank was established in the mid-1930s and operated out of a single branch in Tel Aviv. The bank became widely known in 2002, when it was discovered that a mid-level employee of the bank, Etty Alon, embezzled over NIS 250 million from the bank, mainly in order to help her brother – Ofer Maximov – repay his gambling debts, thus causing the bank to collapse.
This was the third case of an embezzlement resulting in a bank’s collapse during Israel’s history. The previous cases were those of the British-Palestine Bank in the 1970s, and the North America Bank in the 1980s. However, the first two embezzlements were carried out by the bank’s managers, while in the Trade Bank case, the deeds was carried out by a mid-ranked employee. The collapse of the Trade Bank marked the end of small banks in Israel, as the Bank of Israel encouraged them to be either merged or sold, causing the banking segment to become all the more centralized.
The certificate shown here was printed by the Government Printer on secured paper, in accordance with the regulations of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, which prescribe the size of certificates and require their serial numbers to be printed on the upper left hand side and the lower left corner.
(From Barlev collection of Securities Certificates)