Informa employee to Israeli tech firm: Israel based companies not welcome at our event

An employee at a British company tried to deny an Israeli tech firm access to an event in London, according to a report in Financial Times. 

The employee at Informa, a publishing-to-events group, told the tech firm based in Tel Aviv that it didn’t accept “any registrations for companies with headquarters in Israel.”

The request to the attend the Finovate event in London at the end of February was later accepted when a delegate from the Israeli firm called the company and spoke to a different Informa representative.

The employee also turned down another Israeli tech investor, repeating the false claim about a made up company policy regarding Israeli based firms.

The chief business officer of the Israeli tech firm told the FT that the refusal to allow them to attend the event “should never happen to anyone. Not Israelis nor anyone else.”

Informa later issued a statement, saying: “A single individual in one of our sales teams made an error in incorrectly declining a company’s registration for a forthcoming event. The mistake was quickly spotted and rectified, and we have apologised to the company and individuals involved. This was an individual error and does not reflect – and has never reflected – any company policy.”