Shlomo Eliahu: From Beit Lid Transit Camp to Migdal Insurance

From a Beit Lid transit camp to controlling sixty-eight percent of Israel's largest insurance group. Sacked from Migdal as a teenage messenger boy in 1953. Bought it back from Italy's Generali for NIS 3.54 billion in 2012.

Shlomo Eliahu's arc is one of the cleanest reversal stories in Israeli business. He started at Migdal — Israel's leading life insurer — as a teenage messenger boy. He was promoted to switchboard operator. He was fired in 1953. Sixty years later, he wrote a check for NIS 3.54 billion to Italian insurance giant Assicurazioni Generali and bought the entire company.

He has a Hebrew Wikipedia entry. English coverage is thin.

Snapshot

Born January 18, 1936, Baghdad. Olim 1950 — Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, with parents and eight siblings.
Initial settlement: Beit Lid transit camp, then Kiryat Shalom (Tel Aviv).
Polio survivor — exempted from IDF service.
Flagship company: Migdal Insurance and Financial Holdings (TASE: MGDL) — Israel's largest life-insurance and long-term-savings group.
Current stake: ~68.46% via Eliahu 1959 Ltd.
Political career: Member of Knesset 1978–1981 (Dash / Democratic Movement for Change), chaired Finance Committee.
Other holdings: 29% Union Bank of Israel; Gan Ha'ir mall (Tel Aviv); Mount Zion Boutique Hotel; Shlomo Elia Investments.
Stepped down as Migdal Chairman January 2022 — succeeded by former Supreme Court justice Hanan Melcer, then by Roni Gamzo (November 2024).
Children include Ofer Eliahu, former CEO of Migdal Insurance Company.

The Business Story

Eliahu was born in Baghdad in 1936, one of nine siblings in an Iraqi-Jewish family. The family emigrated to Israel in 1950 as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, the airlift that brought roughly 120,000 Iraqi Jews to the new state. They were initially housed in the Beit Lid ma'abara — a corrugated-iron transit camp — and later moved to Kiryat Shalom, a working-class Tel Aviv neighborhood.

Shortly after immigration, the teenage Eliahu took a job at Migdal Insurance. He worked his way from messenger boy to switchboard operator. He was sacked in 1953. He found work in 1955 as an insurance agent at Binyan, a small firm. In 1959 he went independent. In 1966 he founded Eliahu Insurance Company — initially auto-only, later expanding across the full insurance product line.

The capital he built through Eliahu Insurance — and the relationships he formed over decades inside Israeli insurance — financed the move that defined his career. In March 2012, Assicurazioni Generali, the Italian insurance giant that had been a foundational shareholder in Migdal since the company's 1934 founding in Mandatory Palestine, agreed to sell its entire stake to Eliahu. The deal closed in October 2012 for NIS 3.54 billion — a 20 percent premium over Migdal's then-market price, implying a total valuation of NIS 5.1 billion.

Eliahu ran Migdal as Chairman from 2012 through January 2022. The tenure was contentious. Multiple CEOs and chairpersons departed during his decade in the chair — including his own son Ofer, who served four years as CEO of Migdal Insurance Company, the longest of any incumbent in the period. The Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority — Israel's insurance regulator — publicly opposed his management style and his removal of executives. In 2020 he ousted Nir Gilad, the CEO and chairman of the operating subsidiary, over the authority's objections.

In January 2022 Eliahu stepped down as Chairman. Former Supreme Court justice Hanan Melcer succeeded him. In November 2024 Melcer was succeeded by Professor Roni Gamzo, the former health-system director. Eliahu remains the controlling shareholder through Eliahu 1959 Ltd, which holds approximately 68.46 percent of the company.

Why He Matters in Israel

Three reasons.

First, the immigrant arc. Iraqi-born, polio-survivor, transit-camp olim who bought Israel's largest insurance company. Few business arcs in Israel are more emblematic of the country's first-generation economic mobility.

Second, the sector position. Migdal is the dominant Israeli long-term-savings vehicle — life insurance, pension funds, provident funds. The institutional capital flowing through Migdal is structurally larger than its market cap suggests. Eliahu has been the controlling shareholder of that flow for fourteen years.

Third, the conflict record. Eliahu's tenure as Chairman was unusually adversarial — with regulators, with successive CEOs, with the board. The Capital Market Authority's public opposition to his management style is rare and significant. It contributed to the eventual succession to an outside professional chair.

What the Company Does Today

Migdal Insurance and Financial Holdings is a publicly traded Israeli financial group, on the TASE since 1997 and included in the TA-125 Index. Its core subsidiary Migdal Insurance Company offers life, property, health, and other insurance lines. Migdal Capital Markets is the group's investment arm.

The group serves approximately 2.5 million private and corporate customers through 3,000 agents and more than 4,300 employees. Migdal's shareholders' capital was assessed at approximately NIS 7.7 billion. Eliahu 1959 Ltd holds approximately 68.46 percent; the public holds the remainder.

Eliahu personally faced cash-flow stress in 2016 — he negotiated NIS 1 billion in debt restructuring with Bank Leumi and other creditors, after Migdal dividend distributions were restricted by Solvency II capital ratio rules.

Key Holdings

Migdal Insurance and Financial Holdings — ~68.46% via Eliahu 1959 Ltd
Union Bank of Israel — 29%
Gan Ha'ir Mall, Tel Aviv — controlling real estate
Mount Zion Boutique Hotel & Suites
Shlomo Elia Investments Ltd

Legacy and Influence

Eliahu sits in a small group of Israeli founders who built personal capital through an unglamorous, decades-long single-sector concentration — insurance — and then deployed that capital to buy back the company that had once fired them. Most Israeli founder-billionaires built through technology exits, real estate, or trading. Eliahu built through insurance brokerage. That alone makes him a category.

The Migdal transaction is also one of the largest control transfers of an Israeli financial institution from a foreign multinational back to private Israeli hands in the past twenty years. Generali had been part of Migdal since 1934. The 2012 deal closed that ninety-year arc.

Why He Matters Now

Eliahu is ninety. He stepped down as Chairman three years ago. The question of long-term ownership succession at Migdal — through Eliahu 1959 Ltd — is one of the larger open questions in Israeli financial-sector concentration. The family has not publicly resolved it.

The Israeli insurance category is also under sustained regulatory pressure on solvency, fee transparency, and distribution. The chair Migdal sits in is structurally consequential. Eliahu still controls who sits there.

מי הוא שלמה אליהו? מבית לוד למגדל

ממעברת בית ליד ועד שליטה של 68% במגדל ביטוח. נער שפוטר ממגדל ב-1953. רכש אותה חזרה מג'נרלי האיטלקית תמורת 3.54 מיליארד שקל ב-2012.

שלמה אליהו נולד בבגדאד ב-1936 וזה אחד מבני העלייה של מבצע עזרא ונחמיה. המשפחה הגיעה לישראל ב-1950 והתגוררה במעברת בית ליד. כנער עבד אליהו במגדל כשליח ופוטר ב-1953. הוא הקים את חברת אליהו ביטוח ב-1966 והפך לסוכן הביטוח העצמאי הראשון בישראל. כיהן ככנסת ב-1978-1981. ב-2012 רכש 69% ממגדל מהחברה האיטלקית ג'נרלי תמורת 3.54 מיליארד שקל. פרש מתפקיד היו"ר בינואר 2022 — את מקומו תפס שופט בית המשפט העליון לשעבר חנן מלצר ולאחר מכן פרופ' רוני גמזו. עדיין מחזיק בכ-68.46% מהחברה.