Who Is Bezhalel Machlis? President and CEO of Elbit Systems

President & CEO, Elbit Systems · The defense-industrial operator at the head of Israel's largest publicly listed defense company · Born 1956

Bezhalel "Butzi" Machlis is the CEO of Elbit Systems — Israel's largest defense prime contractor and, as of 2026, the most valuable Israeli company on a US exchange.

Machlis has run Elbit since 2013, through the defense-export expansion of the second half of the 2010s, the post-Ukraine global defense rerating that began in 2022, and the multi-year build-out that has positioned Elbit as the structural Israeli industrial position in the global Western defense supply chain. The Elbit chapter under Machlis is one of the longest and most operationally consequential CEO tenures in the Israeli industrial economy.

Machlis's background

Machlis was born in Israel in 1956. His education is at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, in industrial engineering and management. His military service was in the Israeli Air Force as an officer. He joined Elbit in 1985 and has spent his entire industrial career inside the company — more than four decades, an unusual operating-tenure profile in the global defense industry and almost unparalleled in publicly listed Israeli industrial companies.

Four decades inside Elbit

Machlis's career at Elbit progressed through the subsidiary structure that has been a defining feature of the company's industrial organization. He held senior positions across multiple Elbit subsidiaries, including the chief executive role at Elop, the electro-optics subsidiary that is among Elbit's most consequential engineering organizations. He served as Executive Vice President of Strategic Programs before being appointed President and CEO of Elbit Systems in November 2013, succeeding Joseph Ackerman. The progression from engineering management through subsidiary CEO to corporate CEO is structurally Israeli — and structurally rare in the global defense industry, where senior defense-company leadership more frequently comes from government and military backgrounds rather than from inside the industrial organization itself.

The 2013–2026 Elbit chapter

The Elbit chapter under Machlis covers thirteen years of substantial industrial-organization expansion. The 2018 acquisition of IMI Systems — the privatized former Israel Military Industries, with substantial land-systems and ammunition manufacturing capability — was the largest single transaction of the Machlis tenure and reshaped the Elbit product portfolio. The defense-export trajectory through 2018 to 2024 expanded the order book substantially, with notable contract wins across European NATO members, Asia-Pacific allies, and the broader Western defense-export market. The post-2022 global defense rerating — driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the multi-year Western defense-spending commitments that followed, and the renewed emphasis on industrial-base capacity — accelerated the Elbit growth trajectory and revalued the company's order book substantially.

Israel's defense-industrial anchor

Machlis's significance in the Israeli economy is structural and increasingly strategic. The Israeli defense industry is one of the most globally significant industrial categories the country produces, and Elbit is its largest publicly listed expression. As CEO, Machlis is responsible for the operating performance of the company that — for the first time since Mobileye's 2022 refloat — is now the most valuable Israeli company on a US exchange. The Israeli defense industry's broader trajectory — Elbit, alongside the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and the broader privately held defense-tech cohort — represents a structural Israeli industrial position that has substantially compounded across the 2020s. The CEO tenure at the country's largest publicly listed defense company during that compounding is one of the most consequential operating roles in the Israeli economy.

Machlis today

Machlis continues as President and CEO of Elbit Systems. The company employs more than nineteen thousand people globally, with substantial manufacturing and engineering concentration in Israel and a global subsidiary network operating in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Brazil, and additional jurisdictions. The senior leadership at Elbit has been largely stable through the Machlis tenure.

Why Machlis matters now

The strategic question on Machlis's chapter for 2026 and beyond is the sustainability of the order-book expansion and the conversion of the contracted backlog into revenue and cash flow at the rates the public-market valuation now implies. The case for: the multi-year Western defense-spending commitments are structural rather than cyclical, Elbit's product positioning across drones, electro-optics, electronic warfare, and land systems is well-aligned with the categories Western buyers are now prioritizing, and the company's industrial-base capacity has been expanding to meet the demand. The case against: the order-book conversion-to-cash timeline depends on industrial-execution capacity, the post-2022 rerating has stretched the valuation multiple, and insider selling activity through the recent period has flagged investor-attention questions about expectations.

Watch points

• Quarterly order-book progression and backlog conversion-to-revenue rate.
• Major contract wins in NATO and broader Western defense-export markets.
• Operating-margin trajectory as the company scales the post-2022 production capacity.
• Senior leadership stability and any succession-planning signals.
• Geopolitical risk factors affecting Israeli defense-export licensing.

Sources

Elbit Systems Ltd., Annual Report on Form 20-F, fiscal year 2024 (filed via SEC EDGAR). Company investor materials at elbitsystems.com/investors. Tel Aviv Stock Exchange filings via Maya.

Olam coverage

See the Olam entity profile of Elbit Systems (the largest Israeli company on Nasdaq by market value as of mid-2026); and the flagship Olam Nasdaq 20.

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בצלאל ("בוצי") מכליס הוא מנכ״ל אלביט מערכות — קבלן הביטחון הגדול ביותר של ישראל, ונכון ל-2026, החברה הישראלית בעלת השווי הגבוה ביותר בבורסה אמריקאית.

מכליס מנהל את אלביט מאז 2013, דרך התרחבות יצוא הביטחון של המחצית השנייה של שנות ה-2010, התמחור הביטחוני הגלובלי שהחל ב-2022 לאחר אוקראינה, ובניין הרב-שנתי שמיצב את אלביט כעמדה התעשייתית הישראלית המבנית בשרשרת האספקה הביטחונית המערבית. תקופת אלביט תחת מכליס היא אחת מתקופות המנכ״ל הארוכות והמשמעותיות תפעולית בכלכלה התעשייתית הישראלית.

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The Olam Editorial Team

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