Guy Rolnik

Rolnik supports open and competitive markets and points out to failures in the private and public of the Israeli economy. He led a series of informative journalistic campaigns, mainly regarding structural reforms, fostering of competition and reducing concentration in the business and capital sectors.

Beginning in 2005, Rolnik and his team set out on an informative campaign that included hundreds of columns, stories and features regarding the perils of the concentration of economic and political power in few hands in the Israeli economy and the danger is posed to competitiveness, prices, innovation and democracy. Pursuant to this campaign, in October 2010 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bank of Israel's Governor Stanley Fischer set up a committee tasked with formulating recommendations for increasing competitiveness and decreasing concentration in the Israeli business sector.[3] Its final recommendations were published on February 22, 2012.

In 2009 Rolnik initiated a campaign advocating the introduction of competition in the cellular telephony market, which was lacking. Following this campaign, Minister of Communications Moshe Kahlon decided to open the market for competition; Israel's cellular telephone bills soon dropped by 50–90% (for example, while Israeli cellular provider Partner's monthly Average Revenue Per user (ARPU) in 2006-2008 was 161 shekels,[10] by 2015 it fell to 69 shekels,[11] a 57% drop).

In January 2011 Rolnik launched the "Israel 2021 Initiative", aimed at changing the Israeli public discourse, at the time dominated by political and security issues. Rolnik called for more emphasis on economic and social issues and long-term planning. The two-day launch event was attended by 3,000 guests and hosted Prime Minister Netanyahu. There were 175 round table discussions on economic and social issues. According to Channel 2, Israel's main TV channel, TheMarker's ideas inspired and influenced the Israeli social protest that followed in summer of 2011.[12] The 2013 Israeli general election campaigns focused more on economic issues.

In April 2012, Mako, a news website owned by Israeli television broadcaster Keshet, wrote that Guy has "sprouting [...] – and most keenly relevant – pair of fangs in Israeli journalism ... In these times, as it turns out how tycoons exploit us and pyramidal business conglomerates gobble our assets, and how government officials stand by them and not by us, Rolnik and his team are a courageous beacon of light in a media world bent by vested interests and their controlling shareholders. Well before the 2011 social justice protests gained momentum, TheMarker had formulated its principles. When the masses took to the streets, Rolnik could fairly write to his readers, 'I told you so'.” [13]

An independent Israeli watchdog states that “during the first decade following its founding, TheMarker was a lone journalistic voice in a line of battles against the connections between the government and powerful businesspeople and the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of few. Following the 2011 social protests, during which some of Rolnik’s and TheMarker’s gained wide public recognition, some other media outlets began adopting some of the ideas he led. Rolnik’s and TheMarker’s campaigns yielded at least seven major economic reforms: (1) the implementation of the recommendations of the Bejski Commission – ending banks’ control of capital markets (2) the introduction of competition in the cellular market (3) increasing taxes on Israel's natural resources (The Sheshinski Committee) (4) preventing the bailout of tycoons with Israeli taxpayers and savers money following the 2008 financial crisis (5) the creation of Israel's Anti-Concentration Committee (6) the creation of the Strum Committee for the introduction of competition in the banking sector, and (7) exposing the corruption in both the IDB and Bank Hapoalim groups during the reign of the Dankner family, which led to their indictments, convictions and removal from their positions. Rolnik is not identified with any political or party lines. In his commentaries, he points many times to the Northern European model of an open and competitive economy, effective social and inclusive safety nets and high levels of social capital".[5]

In 2014 Rolnik was teaching a course in the Faculty of Management at Tel Aviv University entitled the "Structural Issues in the Israeli Economy."[14][15]

In May 2004, “The 7th eye”, Israel's media critique magazine, which was part of the Israel Democracy Institute interviewed journalists, business people and media experts in Israel. Almost all of them ascertained that Rolnik is Israel's most influential columnist and the best economic journalist in Israel.

“Rolnik writes the most important economic column in Israel, he has no competition. As a member of boards and committees I hear very often people talking about what Rolnik wrote this morning. People read his daily column avidly and with fear. There is no other journalist in Israel that has such position in his field – he is the master of the domain… When he mentions a person, a phenomenon in his column – its value will go up”.

Senior executive in the media industry was quoted: “Rolnik is the most influential economics journalist in Israel, I read every word he writes. Unlike other journalists he manages to surprise me time and again because his position is so unpredictable”.[6]

In February 2011 The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, published a story about Haaretz and Schocken, saying "Under the leadership of a young, hyper-ambitious editor named Guy Rolnik, TheMarker brought a new, more youthful audience to Haaretz — one at least as interested in the high-tech industry as it is in the Palestinian issue — just as the worldwide newspaper crisis hit. TheMarker, which can be bought separately, has helped save the paper. Rolnik has been especially good at publishing investigative pieces on what he calls the 'Israeli oligarchs,' a small group of billionaires and their families who control much of the national economy".[21]

In March 2011 Daniel Doron, the director of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, wrote in The Jerusalem Post: "The strong bond between government and capital that developed here has a third partner, the media. Until recently, when Yisrael Hayom broke the mold, the media were a duopoly owned by the tycoons, and protected them (with the noble exception of TheMarker and its valiant editor Guy Rolnik, who, at great cost, leads the struggle against excess media concentration)".[22]

In October 2011 Israel's Channel 2 aired a program dedicated to the previous Jewish year's main events, the major one being the summer's social protests. The presenter said: “… the hundreds of thousands that took to the streets in the summer strengthened the ideological plight of TheMarker and its Editor-in-Chief, Guy Rolnik, against the concentration of economic power in the hands of few and against the nation's tycoons. Even though it ranks only at number 4 in its readership, in the past months, TheMarker became Israel's most influential newspaper".[12]

In December 2011 Raviv Drucker, anchor of television Channel 10 investigative program "The Source", said he "identifies" with Rolnik's fight against tycoons and added that "Rolnik and TheMarker created, with their own hands", the government-appointed committee that dealt with the concentration of economic power. "It is thanks to them", he said, "that we found out the extent to which our capital and debt markets sometimes resemble a close-knit circle of cronies."[23]

In April 2012 Mako, a news website owned by television broadcaster Keshet, included Rolnik in a list of "Israel's 50 most interesting people". Keshet's journalist, Dror Globerman, wrote: "Even during these tough times for the press in general and Haaretz in particular, it seems that this seasoned editor understands very well which side his bread is buttered on, and it isn't on the side of staying in the good books of advertisers; it's on the side of biting criticism, giving his readers the feeling that there is somebody they can count on. And while about it, he sets an important standard for his colleagues."[13]

In December 2013 “The 7th eye”, wrote: “TheMarker, led by Guy Rolnik turned economic concentration to a central part of the Israeli public discourse. A rare example, not only in Israel, of a media outlet that succeeds through an aggressive, versatile and creative campaign to significantly influence the public agenda to such an extent that the parliament adopts a bill that will bring about dramatic changes to the structure of the economy”.[24]

In December 2013 Aviv Hurvitz, media critic for Israeli Channel2 website, wrote: “Not every day an Israeli newspaper decides to initiate a long–term campaign knowing that it will take years and its chances of success are slim at best. Not even every year. Not every decade a newspaper that struggles for its economic survival – dares to wage war against the strongest forces in the economy. Not even in every generation. TheMarker, led by Guy Rolnik, did it – and succeeded. Four years ago the newspaper went on a relentless, uncompromising battle against economic concentration – a subject that was marginal or totally denied – until TheMarker started its efforts in a consistent and aggressive campaign that included hundreds of editorials and features. This week the campaign was declared a victory when the 'Concentration bill' was approved by the parliament . TheMarker celebrated the success – and for a good and justified reason: if not for TheMarker it is very doubtful if the concentration issue would ever come close to the book of bills of the parliament”.[25]

In January 2014, Professor Steven Davidoff at the University of California, Berkeley's school of law and columnist for The New York Times analyzed the process that influenced Israeli government and lawmakers to formulate and approve the dramatic reform in the economy to break concentration. Davidoff described the role of team of journalists led by Rolnik to initiate the reform and to push it through the political obstacles. He argued that the reform led by Rolnik should offer lessons for United States:

"A number of journalists at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz led the charge, claiming that Israel’s public shareholders often lost out as the tycoons used them to subsidize their collection of businesses. The tycoons could put down little money but control vast swathes of the Israeli economy. These pyramids also used their size to crowd out competitors and take on excessive debt by lending among their companies. The Israeli economy was viewed by some to be uncompetitive because the concentration of businesses arguably drove up prices and decreased competition. In the small Israeli economy, the pyramids were behemoths that some termed too big to fail.

"In October 2010, the Israeli government formed a committee of 10 government regulators known as the concentration committee to examine the issue of the tycoons’ control of the Israeli economy. The committee was advised by Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard Law professor and occasional contributor to DealBook, who strongly advocated breaking up the more significant pyramids.

Committees are usually where things go to die, but the 2011 protests along with Haaretz's sustained campaign kept the cause going. The concentration committee's report was issued in 2012, and it struck directly at the pyramids, aiming to overhaul the Israeli economy. The committee recommended the breakup of the pyramids in the hope that if they were destroyed, prices would come down in the wake of greater competition, helping the average Israeli and addressing income inequality”.[26]

In March 2015, journalist and media critic Michael Massing highlighted the work done by TheMarker and Rolnik in an essay “How to fix American Journalism” that appeared in the special issue of The Nation magazine for its 150 years celebration. According to Massing, the unique campaign that waged Rolnik as Editor-in-Chief of TheMarker is the model for fixing American Journalism: "TheMarker, an Israeli financial newspaper distributed as a supplement to Haaretz, waged an unflagging campaign beginning in the mid-2000s against the extraordinary concentration of economic power in Israel and the dangers that this development posed to Israeli society and democracy. Led by its founding editor, Guy Rolnik, the paper ran periodic stories and columns that paid special attention to the “Israeli oligarchs,” a small group of billionaires and their families who controlled much of the Israeli economy. When the campaign began, the subject of economic concentration was barely discussed in Israel. The stories fed growing outrage over inequality, leading to a series of mass demonstrations in 2011. Those protests, in turn, spurred the Knesset to pass a bill to break up the Israeli conglomerates. It was a remarkable display of how one news organization, through tenacious and unflinching reporting over a period of years, can help spur systemic change... Remarkably, of the many high-profile digital-journalism sites—the Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, Business Insider—not one scrutinizes America's oligarchs the way TheMarker did Israel's. ProPublica, the prime investigative site on the web, has done impressive reporting on a number of important subjects, including fracking and the secret Fed tapes, but in general it remains wedded to a traditional narrow-focus approach”.[1]

On November 14, 2016, Matt Stoller, a staffer of the United States Senate Committee on the Budget, related in a New York Times article about the concentration bill and the mobile market reform: “But there is a more recent example of success the U.S. could look to: Until 2011 Israel had a similar concentration problem. Social protest and aggressive journalism pushed a ‘concentration bill’ through the Knesset, and the results rippled through society. More competition in the mobile market led to a 90 percent price drop.” [27]