Dankner, Tshuva lose their Vegas gamble: Five years after buying the site of the Frontier Hotel, which they blew up, to build the ultimate casino in Las Vegas, Israeli businessmen Nochi Dankner and Yitzhak Tshuva are losing the land once and for all. They'd spent $1.25 billion for the site, on which they thought to invest as much as $8 billion. Then as the devil would have it, the American property scene promptly collapsed, helping to trigger a global economic meltdown. The value of the site melted like highball ice in the desert, leading the two to try to reach some new arrangement with lenders. But this Wednesday evening the two announced that because of disputes with said lenders on rescheduling the debt, the lenders have sued in U.S. courts to seize the land once and for all. Barring last-minute changes, that is that, and Dankner and Tshuva will have lost $700 million.

Bank Discount loses patience with Ampal: Four days after Yossi Maiman suddenly said he'd hand over the controlling interest in Ampal-American Israel Corp. to its irate bondholders, the banks are circling. On Thursday morning Bank Discount demanded its $80 million back immediately. Ampal, which declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S., had borrowed the money to buy Gadot Chemicals Tankers & Terminals in 2007. The bank holds attachments to the Gadot shares, which are forfeit as of now. Meanwhile, the bondholders taking over Ampal have been fielding offers for Gadot, and have hired a consultancy to advise it on a selloff.

Alvarion loss triples: Wireless tech company Alvarion on Thursday admitted to tripling its year-over-year loss to $20.6 million in the third quarter of 2012, and yes, that's in GAAP terms. In non-GAAP terms, which means excluding one-time items, Alvarion lost $7.7 million, compared with $5.8 million the year before. The huge difference between GAAP and non-GAAP is that the firm wrote off some $21 million in inventory from its WiMax division, which it's selling. Cash flow from operations remains a sore point: for the quarter Alvarion reported cash-burn of $6.4 million, leaving it with $15.2 million in the kitty – but it owes the banks $12 million.

Apax likely to sell Tnuva? The Apax multinational investments fund will probably divest its interest in Tnuva, Israel's biggest foods manufacturer, over the next two years, says Itzik Bader, chairman of Granot Central Cooperative, the purchasing organization of the kibbutz movement. Apax bought the 56% controlling interest in Tnuva back in 2008 from kibbutzim and moshavim, at a company value of NIS 4.1 billion; a group of kibbutzim still own 23% of the food company. Granot's share of Tnuva is 6%. Bader dreams that the kibbutzim buy back Tnuva from Apax. On what is Bader's assessment based? On the fact that Apax exists to create value for its shareholders, not to run cowsheds. "Investors don't know what Tnuva is or who it is. They want to get returns in real time."

Fischer doesn't oppose giant potash merger: Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer doesn't oppose letting the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan buy potash producer Israel Chemicals, Bloomberg reports. Unarguably that would mean profits from the sale of Israeli potash around the world would be exported, not stay in Israel – but Fischer doesn't see the problem with that, as long as Israeli jobs are preserved. Granted ICL belongs to the Israel Corporation, which belongs to the Ofer family, but Jerusalem could foil any deal because it owns the so-called golden share (conferring veto power to a selloff) in ICL. PCS already owns about 14% of the Israeli firm.

Antitrust blocks giant ETFs merger: Antitrust commissioner David Gilo is refusing to allow the Meitav and DS Apex brokerages to merge their ETF-management companies (their subsidiaries that manage exchange-traded notes and funds). Meitav has the Mabat brand of ETFs and DS has the Tachlit brand, both of which are well-known in market circles. Granted Gilo will only be formally advising them of this on Friday, but the word is out. The Israel Securities Authority had also been appalled by the notion, as the merger would have created a giant ETFs firm with some NIS 30 billion in assets under management, that being 43% of the Israeli market for ETFs. Now, this won't stop DS and Meitav from merging, but they'll have to sell either Tachlit or Mabat.

With reporting by Amiram Cohen, Nathan Sheva and Yoram Gabison