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heimer and Carnegie as the
competition.
"The investment field is still
in its infancy here," Mr. Caras-
so comments. "Theoretically,
there are about 12 competitors
who could have shown up in
that Institutional Investor poll.
Why didn't they? Because as the
main European bank in Israel,
we're way ahead. We're con-
stant."
A typical day for Dan Caras-
so begins at 4 a.m. when he
makes his way to the neighbor-
hood beit midrash for a few
hours of study. By 6 a.m. he's
eating breakfast with his wife
and three children and by 7:15
a.m. he's in his office scanning
the financial news headlines.
At 1:30 p.m. he heads home for
lunch with his family, returning
again at 7 p.m. for dinner. After
dinner it's back to the office for
phone calls and e-mail messages
with the folks in New York.
"The life I live would have
been difficult in the U.S.," he ad-
mits. After growing up on New
York's Upper West Side and
moving to California with his
family, Mr. Carasso majored in
economics at the University of
Southern California and also
spent several years studying in
Europe.
He then followed his father
into the family business, secu-
rities analysis. After a short
stint at Merrill Lynch as a reg-
istered representative, Dan
Carasso got his master's in busi-
ness administration at Wash-
ington, D.C.'s Georgetown
University and from there it was
on to Goldman Sachs in New
York.
During Mr. Carasso's seven
years at Goldman Sachs he car-
ried out general research, re-
ceiving a full education in the
process. He also made the grad-
ual switch from being a self-pro-
claimed secular Upper West
Side yuppie to an observant one..
It was during his honeymoon
in Israel that Mr. Carasso start-
ed thinking about living there.
"Something immediately
grabbed me about this place
even though I couldn't read the
aleph-bet," he says. "I said, 'I
have to live in this country.' "
The decision was a surprise
to his wife whom Mr. Carasso
says probably imagined that
they would live in Scarsdale,
somewhere near her parents,
and he would be a Goldman
Sachs banker for life.
After deciding to make aliyah
in 1991, Dan Carasso began
wearing a kippah in mid-1992.
"My boss at Goldman Sachs
said, 'Great, we could use more
diversity around here,"' Mr.
Carasso jokes.
His plan was to make aliyah
whether or not there was a job
waiting for him. At that time
there were few Israeli compa-

nies on Wall Street, unlike to-
day.
In the early '90s, the Tel Aviv
Stock Exchange also looked very
different. The Mishtanim Index
of the top 100 traded shares was
at a daily rate of 250, about 400
at today's shekel rate. The TASE
was also on the verge of a crash.
"I spent my whole time at
Furman telling people not to buy
anything," says Carasso. "I had
seen markets go down before,
but in Israel, people in the mar-
ket were much newer at it than
me, and they were panicking."
At this point there was also
little market or company
research being carried out. In
1993, when Carasso went to
Koor Industries,Israers largest
holding company, and asked to
see what had previously been
written about it, he was told that
there was nothing available.
Eli Nahum tells the same sto-
ry. Mr. Nahum is co-managing
director at Zannex Securities
Ltd., an institutional brokers
group that prides itself on being
the only Israeli firm that caters
to foreign clients with a fully
English-speaking staff.
"Until 1993, even 1994, there
was no awareness in the Israeli
market of company research,"
he says. "Nobody realized that
a company should cooperate and
give details about itself to the
general public."
Today it is a very different sto-
ry. At UBS, as at the other in-
vestment firms, Mr. Carasso
does general research covering
all the major industries, from re-
tail and telecommunications to
investments and chemicals.
He spends anywhere from 10
to 15 hours a week talking to
chief financial officers at Israel's
major companies.
Two analysts in the UBS Lon-
don office cover holding compa-
nies and banks.
"I have a strong advantage
over my competitors because I'm
sitting here and they're sitting
in New York or London, making
a couple of visits here a year,"
says Carasso. "When I'm abroad
on marketing trips, I feel that
I'm losing touch with what's go-
ing on in Israel within two to
three days."
In the foreseeable future, Mr.
Carasso believes he will contin-
ue doing analysis. "We are tru-
ly an emerging stock market in
the incubation phase, and it's an
exciting time to be in this field,"
he says. "The gross domestic
product of a typical Israeli
household is not that different
from Europe, where there is a
higher-developed industry with
thousands of people sitting on
trading floors.
"Right now, the Israeli mar-
ket is one of the cheapest on the
planet. In a few years, well mar-
vel at where it was today." ❑
(c) Jerusalem Post 1997

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