That Midas touch. Finally an Israeli has it

Erel Margalit, general partner and co-founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners, made 59th place on Forbes' annual Midas list, which ranks the 100 people "who most successfully use venture capital to create wealth for their investors".

Margalit, the first Israeli to make the prestigious index, helped found JVP eleven years ago. As the fund's manager, he was partner to establishing dozens of companies, some of which achieved public stock offerings or sale to multinationals.

Among his picks were Precise Software, sold to Veritas Software in June 2003 for some $600 million; Fundtech (NASDAQ:FNDT.O); Jacada (NASDAQ:JCDA.O); and Netro (Nasdaq:NTRO).

Margalit's biggest exit was Chromatis, which Lucent bought in 2000 for $4.8 billion. Never mind that the giant later closed down the unit; that deal alone brought JVP more than $700 million. However, later Lucent stock tanked, leaving the JVP investors with only $160 million.

The Israeli venture capitalist took a great deal of criticism for delaying in selling the Lucent shares, and failing to take steps to protect the investment's value. That did not stop him, come 2001, from raising $405 million for another fund.

To date JVP has some $670 million under management in four funds.

First and second place on the Forbes list were taken by Indians: Promod Haque of Delhi, who works with Norwest Venture Partners; and Vinod Khosla, dubbed the king of billion-dollar exits, who works with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.