Emblaze Ltd. (LSE:BLZ)
("Emblaze" or "the Group")
Directorate Change
Ra'anana, Israel - 28 April 2009: The Board of Emblaze today announces the
appointment of Mr. Yuval Cohen and Mr. Shmuel Barashi as additional
non-executive directors. Mr. Cohen and Mr. Barashi are both partners of
Fortissimo Capital Fund ("Fortissimo")*, a growth equity fund focusing
primarily on technology companies. The appointments will be effective as of 01
May 2009.
Mr. Cohen received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.Sc in Industrial
Engineering from the Tel Aviv University. Prior to founding Fortissimo in 2003,
Mr. Cohen was a General Partner at Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), a venture
capital fund, from 1997 until 2002. Previously, Mr. Cohen held various
executive positions in the Silicon Valley, including at Intel Capital and DSP
Group. Mr. Cohen is currently the Chairman of Soda Club Holdings Ltd. and
Telrad Networks Ltd., and a director in Hadasit and Poalim Ventures. Mr. Cohen
was also the Chairman of NUR Macroprinters Ltd., a portfolio company of
Fortissimo, until it was sold to Hewlett Packard in 2008.
Mr. Barashi received an MBA from the Hebrew University, an LLM from Bar Ilan
University and a BA in Economic and Accounting from the Hebrew University. Mr.
Barashi has been a partner of Fortissimo since 2005 and prior to that he
established his own accounting firm that was later merged into BDO Israel,
where Mr. Barashi became a senior partner. Mr. Barashi is currently a director
of Soda Club Holdings Ltd. and was previously a director of Nur Macroprinters,
a portfolio company of Fortissimo, until it was sold to Hewlett Packard in
2008.
Naftali Shani, Chairman of Emblaze said: "I am delighted that Mr. Cohen and Mr.
Barashi agreed to join the Board and believe they will bring added value thanks
to their global business experience and professional skills in the technology
space."
There is no additional information which requires disclosure under paragraph
9.6.13R of the Listing Rules.
(*) As at 13 January 2009, Fortissimo holds 16% of the Company's issued and
outstanding share capital
Enquiries:
Emblaze Ltd
Hagit Gal +972 9 7699302/ 339
Corfin Communications
Harry Chathli, Victoria Ward +44 (0)20 7977 0020
About Emblaze
Emblaze Ltd is a group of technology companies addressing both growth and
innovation activities thus combining the stability of "bread and butter" mature
technology enterprises with "high-risk / high-reward" investments in
innovation.
Our Growth arm includes Formula Systems (NASDAQ: FORTY and TASE: FORT), which
harbors the following subsidiaries: Magic Software Enterprises Ltd. (NASDAQ &
TASE: MGIC) develops, markets and supports composite application development
and deployment platforms with a service-oriented architecture (SOA), including
application integration and business process management (BPM), with existing
and legacy systems; Matrix IT Ltd. (TASE: MTRX) is one of Israel's leading
integration and information technology services companies, active in four
principal areas: software solutions and services, software products,
infrastructure solutions and hardware products, and training and assimilation.;
Sapiens International Corporation N.V. (NASDAQ & TASE: SPNS) is a provider of
IT solutions that modernize business processes to enable insurance and other
companies to quickly adapt to changes; and nextSource Inc., designs, develops
and implements web-based, high quality, innovative human capital management
solutions.
Our Innovation arm includes Emblaze Mobile, a designer of advanced mobile
devices; EMOZE, a provider of Push Email and synchronisation technology for
mobile devices; and ZONE-IP (LSE: ZIP) (Emblaze V CON), a provider of wireless
video communications technologies and conferencing solutions for operators and
enterprise markets over IP networks.
The Emblaze Group is traded on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: BLZ) since 1996.
www.Emblaze.com