lastminute.com - Economic Audit

Supply Chain & Sourcing Relationships

lastminute.com operates as an online travel agency (OTA) and meta-search group, not a goods retailer, and No public evidence identified of any commercial sourcing relationship with Israeli agricultural aggregators or exporters such as Mehadrin, Hadiklaim, Galilee Export, or Agrexco successors. The company’s principal Israel-market activity is lastminute.co.il, a joint venture established with Israeli-listed Issta Lines Group and launched in March 2021 as lastminute.com’s first website outside Europe ¹²³. This joint venture is described in trade press as combining lastminute.com’s technology platform with Issta’s “localised presence and commercial agreements” in the Israeli market, which functions as the group’s primary sourcing/distribution linkage into Israel rather than a physical-goods supply chain ²³. lastminute.co.il maintains a registered company profile with an office presence in Israel ⁴, and the joint-venture relationship is also recorded in deal-tracking databases ⁵. No public evidence identified of an importer-of-record structure, seasonal sourcing patterns, or third-party/indirect sourcing arrangements tied to Israel, consistent with the company’s digital-intermediation business model rather than physical goods trade.

Product Origin, Labeling & Regulatory Compliance

Settlement-origin product labeling requirements (e.g., EU/UK country-of-origin rules applied to goods produced in West Bank settlements) are not applicable to lastminute.com’s business model, which sells travel intermediation services rather than physical products; No public evidence identified of any regulatory finding or enforcement action involving lastminute.com on origin-labeling grounds. No public evidence identified of a published lastminute.com corporate policy specifically addressing the labeling or handling of accommodation or travel listings located in occupied Palestinian territory, in contrast to the practices examined for other platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com in Human Rights Watch’s 2018 investigation of tourist-rental listings in West Bank settlements, which did not evaluate lastminute.com as a covered platform ⁶. lastminute.com’s own consumer-facing sites list Tel Aviv and Israel-wide hotel, vacation-package, and flight inventory as destination-market content ⁷⁸⁹, but no systematic evidence was identified indicating that this inventory includes listings physically located in West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Golan Heights settlements as distinct from Israel-proper locations.

Investment, Capital & Financial Exposure

lastminute.com’s parent (lm group / lastminute.com N.V.) established lastminute.co.il as a joint venture with Israeli TASE-listed Issta Lines Group, launched 10–11 March 2021 and described in company and press statements as lastminute.com’s first website outside Europe ¹²³. This represents an operational rather than purely portfolio investment: a jointly branded, jointly operated OTA entity with a physical representative office in Tel Aviv ¹⁴. Ownership percentages and the capital investment amount in the joint venture were not disclosed in any source reviewed ¹²³⁵. lastminute.com N.V.’s controlling shareholder vehicle, Freesailors Coöperatief U.A., has historically held a majority or near-majority stake, later reduced through a 2024 reorganisation that increased the company’s free float ¹⁰¹¹. In April 2021, Fedro S.A. sold its stake in Freesailors to Sterling Strategic Value Fund and a pool of private investors ¹², and in 2022 lastminute.com N.V. moved to buy out remaining minority holders in Freesailors to support management investment and incentive schemes ¹³. No public evidence identified that Freesailors, Sterling Strategic Value Fund, or other disclosed shareholders hold direct investments or subsidiaries with Israeli economic exposure separate from the lastminute.co.il joint venture. No public evidence identified of lastminute.com or its parent holding Israeli sovereign bonds, Israel-domiciled equity, or Israel-focused fund units as treasury or portfolio assets, and No public evidence identified of a dedicated lastminute.com R&D lab, technology partnership, or accelerator programme in Israel distinct from the Issta commercial joint venture.

Operational Presence & Market Activity

lastminute.co.il maintains a representative office in Tel Aviv, Israel, with a reported headcount of 11–50 employees per its company profile ⁴¹. The joint venture pairs lm group’s technology platform with Issta Lines Group’s (TASE: ISTA) localised commercial presence in the Israeli travel market ²³, and Issta’s own corporate profile is separately tracked by financial data providers ¹⁴. Company launch statements framed the Israeli market opportunity in terms of pre-pandemic outbound travel volume - Issta’s CEO noted that in the year before COVID-19, the number of Israelis who flew abroad was comparable to the country’s total population of roughly nine million - and tied the venture’s timing explicitly to the Abraham Accords and Israel’s vaccination rollout ²³¹. lastminute.com’s main consumer-facing websites separately list Tel Aviv and Israel hotel, vacation-package, and flight inventory as a destination market ⁷⁸⁹. Israel is not disclosed as a distinct segment in lastminute.com group’s annual-report geographic breakdown; the group’s five named core markets - UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy - accounted for 85% of 2024 group revenue, with Israel falling within the remaining “other countries” category ¹⁵.

Corporate Structure & Foundational Ties

The original lastminute.com brand was founded on 2 September 1998 in London by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman ¹⁶¹⁷. The current corporate group, lastminute.com N.V. (lm group), descends from Volagratis, founded in 2004 in Italy by Fabio Cannavale and Marco Corradino, which became Bravofly Rumbo Group and acquired the lastminute.com brand from Sabre Holdings in May 2015 before rebranding as lastminute.com Group ¹⁶. The group was not founded or originally incorporated in Israel; lastminute.co.il is an Israel-incorporated joint-venture subsidiary formed in 2021, i.e., an acquired/created market-entry entity rather than the group’s origin ¹²³. The group’s current legal and operational headquarters is Chiasso, Switzerland (lastminute.com N.V., SIX: LMN), with no dual or legacy Israeli headquarters; the Israel presence is confined to the separate lastminute.co.il joint-venture entity and its Tel Aviv office ¹⁶⁴. Corporate governance information, including the board of directors, is published on the company’s investor portal ¹⁸, as is its shareholder structure ¹¹. No public evidence identified of Israeli state ownership stakes, Israeli government board appointees, Israeli government contracts, or critical-national-infrastructure designation involving lastminute.com or lastminute.co.il. The joint-venture partner, Issta Lines Group, is TASE-listed, and its former controlling shareholder (the National Union of Israeli Students) sold a 16% stake in 2022, ending its controlling position ¹⁹¹⁴; No public evidence identified of defense-related business activity or settlement/occupied-territory operations attributable to Issta in sources reviewed. No public evidence identified of golden shares, founder shares, or charter provisions tying lastminute.com to Israeli state policy objectives.

Profit Repatriation & Economic Contribution

No Israel-specific revenue figure is disclosed in lastminute.com group’s public annual reporting; Israel is not among the group’s five named core markets (UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy), which together represented 85% of 2024 group revenue ¹⁵. The lastminute.co.il joint-venture structure - combining lm group (SIX: LMN) and the publicly listed Issta Lines Group (TASE: ISTA) - implies bidirectional commercial flows, with Issta contributing Israel-market commercial relationships and localisation and lm group contributing its technology platform ¹²³. No public disclosure was located on the joint venture’s profit-split mechanics, consolidation treatment, or direction of profit repatriation between the two parent groups ¹²³. No public evidence identified of any government or industry-body designation characterising lastminute.co.il’s or lastminute.com’s role within the Israeli travel sector beyond company and trade-press description of the venture as a growth entrant into the Israeli outbound-flights market ²³.

End Notes