"The greatest bank robbery ever," fumed Mordechai Virshubski, a member of Israel's Knesset. He and many of his countrymen were outraged at the news that Ernest Japhet, the former chairman of Bank Leumi (1985 assets: $22 billion), had negotiated for himself $5 million in severance pay and a $360,000 annual pension. Protesters stormed the bank's Tel Aviv headquarters. A prime reason for the anger was that Japhet had been forced to step down last year when a government commission criticized his role in the 1983 crash of the value of Israeli bank stocks. As public indignation mounted last week, the bank's...
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