The Quiet BRM Partner Behind the Expected Multibillion Shekel Exit from Meitav
Israeli business pages have recently focused on a possible sale of control in Meitav, after BRM, the investment firm owned by Eli and Nir Barkat, hired Goldman Sachs to look for a buyer for its stake in Israel’s largest and most profitable investment house. The holding is currently worth close to NIS 3 billion. Missing from much of that coverage is the Barkat brothers’ long-time partner, Yuval Rachavi, who owns one-third of BRM, just like each of the brothers.
Rachavi, 62, has long described himself as someone who does not enjoy business. He stepped away early from day-to-day management of the joint fund and left the business side to Eli Barkat, his childhood friend from Jerusalem. A technology man to his core, he studied computer science and mathematics at the Hebrew University, began programming at 12, and remained BRM’s CTO for years before moving into an advisory role. A market source said Rachavi is interested mainly in the technical side of companies, rarely in negotiations, and still writes code and follows tech trends closely.
Together with the Barkats and Omri Mann, Rachavi founded BRM in 1988 as an anti-virus company that later became a venture fund. The group’s best-known wins included Check Point, Whale Communications, Moovit, and V-Wave, and Rachavi also made one private investment outside BRM, in MyHeritage, which was sold in 2021 for about $600 million. One major setback was BackWeb, which rose sharply before collapsing with the dot-com crash.
BRM’s biggest investment outside technology was its 2010 purchase of control in Dash, later merged into Meitav, for about NIS 600 million. In 2023, BRM sold 2.5% of Meitav for NIS 140 million and still holds about 24%, now worth nearly NIS 3 billion. The stake follows a more than 1,000% surge in the stock over the past three years, with Meitav now valued at about NIS 12 billion and managing roughly NIS 450 billion in assets. A senior market source said the Barkats and Rachavi are stunned by the valuation and want to turn the jump into an exit, a process that has been on the table for some time.
