■ THE OUTSTANDING economic news last week that CISCO Systems is buying the Israeli-founded NDS Group Ltd. for $5 billion has prompted Jerusalem City Council member Rachel Azaria, who heads the Yerushalmim faction, to write to both President Shimon Peres and Mayor Nir Barkat urging them to use all the influence at their disposal to make Jerusalem the center of CISCO’s Israel operations. The acquisition will make CISCO one of the world’s leading providers of next-generation video and television software.
Of some 5,000 NDS employees in various parts of the world, around 1,300 work at the NDS Jerusalem R&D Center. Many of them are native English speakers. NDS is now headquartered in the UK where it is owned by Permira, a private equity firm that has the controlling interest of 51 percent, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp which has 49%.
In her letter Azaria writes that Jerusalem has excellent educational facilities for the training of software engineers and other hi-tech professions, and states that now is the time to utilize municipal and government incentives to ensure that the CISCO-NDS merger will be of benefit to the capital and that its operations in the city will intensify. Azaria points out that this is a significant opportunity to dramatically increase the number of jobs available in Jerusalem.
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