In accordance with the provisions of Clause 1.5.4(d) of the tender documents, the authority to decide on this matter is at the discretion of the tenders committee, and it is entitled to allow a bidder whose shareholders provided services to an institutional body to submit a proposal, if it is found that - "this is a non-real concern of a conflict of interest, and that in the circumstances of the case the committee is of the opinion that there is no justification to prevent the bidder from submitting a proposal".
As the parent company noted in a letter to the tenders committee dated March 19, 2023, the company does not have an engagement with the institutional entities that constitutes a "material engagement"... There is no institutional entity from which the company's revenue turnover reaches 5% of the parent company's annual turnover... Danel, which provides software services, inter alia, to institutional investors, is indeed a subsidiary of the parent company, but it is an independent entity, with completely separate engagements from all the engagements of the parent company...
In the discussion of the tenders committee, it emerged that on the face of it, this is a very limited concern of a conflict of interest... The winning supplier has no flexibility in providing services or setting prices. The professionals clarified that the main concern for a conflict of interest on the part of the winning supplier will be the bias in the valuation of a certain asset, in which one institutional entity or a limited number of entities invest, due to a foreign interest. In this regard, Ness-Pierre Value presented an estimation model with a fixed methodology, dependent on external and essentially independent variables, which leaves a relatively narrow margin for discretion. In addition, in accordance with the requirements of the tender, the winning supplier is subject to ongoing supervision, audit, reporting and publication requirements. The winning supplier must establish a professional committee that includes professionals in the field, who are not involved in the company's day-to-day operations, that will supervise the supplier's activities and report to the Authority on its work. In addition, the winning supplier must conduct an ongoing internal audit by an internal auditor, submit the audit reports to the Authority, maintain an event log for the project, including reporting on the implementation of changes, etc., and publish to the public the list of valued assets, price quotes and basic data on how the price quotes are calculated.