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The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange was closed Tuesday for Memorial Day and Wednesday for Independence Day.

On Monday, after the market closed, the Bank of Israel left the country’s benchmark interest rate at 0.5% for May.

The bourse’s benchmark TA-25 Index closed 2.20% higher at 812.32, while the TA 100 Index (XX:1884407: news , chart , profile ) added 2.32% to 745.25.

The Tel-Tech 15 Index of top technology issues tacked on 2.76% to 178.70. And the Real Estate 15 Index leaped 4.53% to 225.05.

The most active issue was Teva Pharmaceutical, which slumped 2.5%. Only two other members of the TA 25 fell: telecom provider Bezeq, off 1.9%, and Bank Mizrahi Tefahot, down 1.1%.

The rest of the banks and telecom companies were higher.

Deutsche Bank analyst Dan Harverd upgraded Bank Leumi to buy, saying that it has “the highest credit quality of the larger banks,” and he raised his target prices on the banks generally. The price-to-book-value multiples on the banks range from 0.5 to 1.0, Harverd said.

“Key risks for the sector include a deep economic slowdown that would cause credit quality to deteriorate and provisions” for possible losses on bad loans “above our expectations; adverse regulation, and the impact of more severe competition, particularly” for retail customers, the analyst wrote in a report.

Bank Hapoalim climbed 3.4%, Bank Leumi jumped 4.2%, and Discount Bank added 1.2%.

Partner Communications, the Israel affiliate of the Orange cellular network, rose 1.4%, No. 1 cellular provider, Cellcom, climbed 3.2%.

Israel Chemicals, producer of fertilizer and chemicals derived from the Dead Sea, advanced 2.8%. Makhteshim-Agan, the agrichemicals specialist, advanced 4.4%.

Investors were hungry for the foods companies, boosting Strauss by 4.3% and Osem by 3.4%.

Within technology, all 15 members of the benchmark index advanced. The most active issue was Nice Systems, the producer of digital recording and archiving solutions, which jumped 2.7%.

Nice said it received a contract under which a Swiss-based multinational bank that it did not identify would expand its use of its Actimize solution. The system is designed to spot suspicious money movements and ensure compliance with anti-money-laundering regulations. The bank is expanding use of the system to include an equities-trading oversight function, Nice Systems said.

Notable gainers included tech-investment manager Formula Systems, up nearly 7%; VeriFone, the producer of payment-processing solutions, up 4.3%, and defense contractor Elbit Systems, up 3.7%.

Vision Systems International, a joint venture of Elbit and Rockwell Collins, received $120 million of contracts for aircraft-helmet-mounted display systems, media reports said.

In the real estate sector, Africa-Israel Investments leaped 11% while Jerusalem Economic added 4.5% and Alony Hetz climbed 3.8%.

Israel Stocks: Market up; Deutsche upgrades banks; Nice gets pact

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DETROIT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Chrysler rushed to clinch deals with Fiat SpA and a fractious group of lenders on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy a day ahead of a government-imposed restructuring deadline.

U.S. President Barack Obama said concessions by Chrysler's unions and its major bank lenders had made him more hopeful than he had been just a month ago that the struggling automaker could be made viable.

But he added that it was still not clear if Chrysler would need to seek bankruptcy protection to cement concessions from its lenders and move ahead with a planned alliance with Fiat.

"The details have not yet been finalized so I don't want to jump the gun, but I'm feeling more optimistic than I was about the possibilities about that getting done," Obama said in a news conference.

The White House has set a series of aggressive targets for Chrysler in order to justify another $6 billion in investment on top of the $4 billion in emergency loans that the government has extended since the start of the year.

The No. 3 U.S. automaker has won cost-cutting concessions from its unions in the United States and Canada and is on the brink of closing its deal with Fiat, a person involved in those negotiations told Reuters.

That leaves the focus on ongoing debt restructuring talks spearheaded by the Obama administration's autos task force and former investment banker Steve Rattner.

In a bid to win over three fund management firms that had spurned an offer to accept $2 billion in cash in exchange for writing off all of Chrysler's $6.9 billion in secured debt, U.S. officials sweetened the terms by throwing in another $250 million, people involved in those discussions said.

The three creditors who balked at the U.S. Treasury's $2 billion offer were Oppenheimer Funds, Perella Weinberg Partners and Stairway Capital, sources said.

About 45 financial institutions hold Chrysler's secured debt. Failure to win their support on debt forgiveness would send the automaker into bankruptcy, officials have said.

An Obama administration official said Chrysler talks could run up to the deadline of 11:59 p.m. EDT on Thursday.

Fiat and Chrysler are prepared to complete a merger deal by Thursday that would be taken into bankruptcy court as a key element of the restructuring plan if needed, a person with direct knowledge of the preparations said.

Meanwhile, Chrysler's almost 27,000 U.S. factory workers represented by the United Auto Workers union were wrapping up a ratification vote on Wednesday on cost-cutting steps intended to make the automaker's wage and benefits competitive with its leanest rivals in the U.S. market.

If the new UAW contract is ratified as widely expected, it would give the union a 55-percent stake in a restructured Chrysler. Early returns showed union-represented workers voting heavily in favor of the contract modifications.

GM BONDHOLDERS PROTEST

Chrysler's race to restructure has played out as a kind of prelude to the slower-moving process under way for its larger rival General Motors Corp.

GM bondholders who represent about $27 billion of the automaker's debt are being asked to write off about 90 percent of what they are owed in a debt-for-equity exchange that the automaker launched this week despite investor protests.

A committee representing GM bondholders planned to present an alternative plan to the U.S. autos task force on Thursday that would give them a controlling 51-percent equity interest in a restructured company, a person familiar with the plans told Reuters.

Bondholders had been offered 10-percent under the terms of the GM debt exchange.

By contrast, the UAW, which is owed $7 billion less than bondholders, would get a 39-percent stake.

"What they've offered us is ridiculous," said Chris Crowe, 50, a Denver, Colorado-based home inspector at an event organized for small bondholders in a Detroit suburb. "I know there are only so many pieces of pie, but they're giving us crumbs."

Auto dealers affiliated with both Chrysler and GM announced they had hired a pair of high-profile law firms to represent their interests in the government-directed restructuring.

GM, which has been kept in operation with $15.4 billion of U.S. government funding, has until June 1 to push ahead with its own restructuring which includes plans to cut 40 percent of its U.S. dealers in less than two years.

Auto dealers are independently owned and protected by state franchise laws that industry executives have said could make it very expensive and difficult for GM to shut down dealerships.

GM's national dealer council hired Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, the firm confirmed on Wednesday, a day after dealers demanded compensated in exchange for closing.

Chrysler's national dealer body hired Arnold & Porter LLP, the firm said on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki, Soyoung Kim, David Bailey, Nick Carey, Jui Chakravorty, John Crawley; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Bernard Orr)

Chrysler in last-ditch talks

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