Good morning.
The brutal terror attacks on Israel and the escalating violence they have triggered have cast a terrible pall over the world for the last two weeks. Many CEOs have spoken out on the issue, as Yale’s Jeff Sonnenfeld writes in a commentary piece here. Many more are dealing with consequences affecting employees with friends and family in both Israel and Gaza.
I had an interesting conversation with one Israeli entrepreneur this week who found a silver lining amid the horror. His name is Gal Krubiner, and he is co-founder and CEO of Pagaya. The company employs 700 people, 400 of whom are in Israel. It works with U.S. banks to make loans to people who otherwise would not have access to credit, using AI to qualify them. “Fifty percent of people applying for a loan are getting denied,” Krubiner said. Pagaya aims to help fix that. The company went public through a SPAC transaction last year, and currently has a market cap of around a billion dollars. It has funded more than $16 billion in loans.
Krubiner says many of his Israeli employees have joined the war effort, and as a result, he is having to rely more heavily on his U.S. employees to run the business. But, he says:
“To see the people, even between the U.S. and Israel, helping each other is amazing. People are actually wanting to help, rather than running away. In Israel in the last few years, I think that when you would see the news, you would see how politicians have been dividing everyone. There have been Orthodox and not Orthodox, Arabs and Jews, right wing and left wing. Then in a single day, everyone is united. It’s like, unfortunately, your 9/11. Everyone is coming together. So it’s very bitter, but a little bright.”
You can find more on how CEOs and others are responding to the conflict here, and see one case study of a CEO who got it wrong here. Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
