Azrieli Group


Azrieli Group is an Israeli real estate and holding company named after its founder David Azrieli. The company is engaged mainly in the development and management of shopping malls and office buildings in Israel. The company is the largest shopping malls company in Israel and manages 13 shopping malls with about 720,000 square metres. Azrieli Group is listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and is included in the TA-25 and the Real-Estate 15 indices.

History

Azrieli Group started its activities in 1982, developing the Ayalon Mall in Ramat Gan. The mall was opened in July 1985, and was the first mall in Israel to have a large shopping complex outside the city centre with a parking lot surrounding it. For this mall David Azrieli invented the word for "mall" in Hebrew, "kanyon". The word kanyon is a play on the words "kana" which means "to buy" and "henyon" which means "parking space", while at the same time sounding like the English word canyon. With the establishment of this mall, the word kanyon entered the Hebrew language. The word is now used to describe any covered shopping centre and many malls in Israel since then have been named with "Kanyon" in their title.
The group opened its second mall, Hanegev Mall in Beer Sheva, in 1989 and a third mall, the Jerusalem Mall in 1993.
During 2016 the group entered the eCommerce field, by acquiring BUY2, one of the leading eCommerce websites in Israel, for a deal estimated 80M ILS.

Development of the Azrieli Center

Between 1996 and 2007 the group developed the Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv, a complex that includes three office buildings above a large shopping mall. The Azrieli Center is located on a 34,500 square meter site in east Tel Aviv next the Ayalon Highway, which was previously used as Tel Aviv's dumpster-truck parking garage. The $350,000,000 project revitalized the area.

Holdings

Shopping malls

17 malls including:
13 Office buildings including: