Revealed: How a German-US corporate giant became the world’s largest foreign financier of Israel’s wars
Submitted by Sebastian Shehadi on Thu, 06/18/2026 - 12:02
Munich-based Allianz and California subsidiary have amassed at least $2.67bn in Israeli government bonds since 2024
An Israeli soldier during a West Bank raid in December 2025. Israeli government bond sales have helped fund the country's wars (Zain Jaafar/AFP) Off At the height of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, one company became the single largest foreign financier of the Israeli state – holding more in Israeli government bonds than the US, the UK, France and every other country put together.
That company is Allianz, the German insurance and financial services giant, alongside its California-based bond management subsidiary PIMCO, the world's largest active bond manager.
Data shared with Middle East Eye by Profundo, an Amsterdam-based sustainability research firm, shows that by September 2025 the Allianz group had amassed approximately $2.67bn in Israeli government bonds across its various fund subsidiaries.
This represented 51.8 percent of all non-Israeli holdings captured in the dataset at that moment. Put simply: at its peak, Allianz-PIMCO held more Israeli war bonds than the rest of the world combined.
Governments issue bonds to raise money for public spending or to repay debts.
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For Israel, those sales have been crucial to financing its wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, with bond issuance hitting historic highs in both 2024 and 2025.
Buying the bonds of a government under active genocide investigation carries legal and reputational risks that go well beyond ordinary sovereign debt investment, but investors have been well compensated for taking that risk.
'PIMCO's continued investments in Israeli sovereign debt demonstrate a clear disregard for human rights responsibilities'
– Max Hammer, BankTrack
Israeli government bonds issued during the war have carried an average interest rate of approximately 5.56 percent, compared with 1.4 percent for pre-war issuances.
That "war premium" has made Israeli bonds an attractive trade for yield-hungry institutional investors, even as the country's credit rating was downgraded by all three major agencies.
“In light of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, PIMCO's continued investments in Israeli sovereign debt demonstrate a clear disregard for human rights responsibilities and international legal obligations,” says Max Hammer, a campaigner at BankTrack, which monitors commercial banks' impacts on human rights.
“They also put PIMCO at odds with many of its peers, which have understandably decided to pull back from Israel's bond issuances.
“Human rights organisations, international legal experts and UN officials – including Francesca Albanese – have been clear that providing financing to Israel inevitably means contributing to gross human rights abuses and war crimes.”
Surging demand
The Profundo dataset tracks international institutional investors in Israeli government bonds across four snapshots between late 2024 and early 2026.
While it is not fully comprehensive, it captures a significant flow of bond sales and reveals an overarching picture of surging western demand.
More specifically: total non-Israeli holdings rose from $1.16bn in November 2024 to at least $4.91bn by March 2026 – growing fourfold in just over a year, as Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon continued and attacks on the occupied West Bank accelerated.
Two countries drove almost all of that growth.
Germany and the US together accounted for 90.7 percent of all non-Israeli holdings as of early 2026 – $4.45bn of the $4.91bn total. Every other country combined accounted for less than 10 percent.
In November 2024, the Allianz group – spanning its core German operations, PIMCO's US fund platform, PIMCO Europe and Allianz Global Investors – held just $32m in Israeli bonds. Less than a year later, in September 2025, that figure had grown to $2.6bn.
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The scale of the increase – and its concentration in a single corporate group – is utterly unmatched in Profundo’s dataset.
Asset management firm PIMCO's headquarters in Newport Beach, California (Reuters)
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Ward Warmerdam, a senior researcher at Profundo, told MEE: "Allianz, through PIMCO, is by far the largest non-Israeli investor in Israeli sovereign bonds and has been so since the October 7th attacks. It has not divested from these bonds, even after allegations of genocide were submitted to the ICJ.
“It's no coincidence that it's a US-German company that is investing so much into Israel. Allianz/Pimco is the largest fixed income investor in the world. But, that only goes some way to explain this scale of investment. I believe it is disproportionate, and deliberate.
“And the question of how deliberate it is for them to double down on Israeli sovereign bond issuances after October 7th is something I believe only insiders can speak to."
MEE contacted both Allianz and PIMCO with detailed questions about their Israeli government bond holdings but neither company had responded at the time of publication.
What is PIMCO?
PIMCO, the Pacific Investment Management Company, is one of the most powerful forces in global bond markets.
Founded in California in 1971, it manages $2.27tn in total assets as of early 2026 – including $1.86tn on behalf of external clients such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies.
Together with Allianz Global Investors, PIMCO also helps its parent, Allianz, manage nearly €2tn in third-party assets, making the Allianz group one of the largest asset managers globally.
PIMCO has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Allianz since 2000.
The relationship matters here because the Allianz group's Israeli bond holdings are spread across multiple fund vehicles – primarily PIMCO's various subsidiaries, but also Allianz Global Investors, the group's own asset management arm – each filing separately with regulators.
It is this aggregation of those filings, captured in Profundo's dataset, that produces the $2.67bn peak figure.
PIMCO's role in Israeli bond markets extends beyond its own investment positions.
How activists pushed the UK's largest pension megafund to divest from Israel Read More »
As one of the world's largest fixed income managers, PIMCO also acts as an external sub-manager for pension funds and institutional investors around the world – buying bonds on their behalf within mandates set by those clients.
MEE revealed in a previous investigation how PIMCO purchased $29.2m in Israeli government bonds through Border to Coast – the UK's largest public pension pool – in 2024 and 2025.
The purchases only came to light after pro-Palestine activists made inquiries – prompting Border to Coast to begin pressing PIMCO for answers about why it had bought the bonds.
Notably, PIMCO had never previously explained or discussed its Israeli bond purchases, until last year.
The only rationale now on record – as relayed to Border to Coast before it divested under activist pressure– is that the bonds were bought based on Israel's then-strong credit rating and economic fundamentals. This, however, does not rule out political relationships and vested interests behind the scene.
Neither PIMCO's French CEO, Emmanuel Roman, nor any other executive has addressed the purchases publicly.
The firm’s global advisory board includes Joshua Bolten, former White House chief of staff and a prominent figure in Washington's pro-Israel circles. The advisory board also includes former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The Border to Coast case is not isolated. PIMCO manages money on behalf of many institutional clients globally – and how far it has purchased Israeli government bonds across those mandates is largely invisible to the public.
As such, Profundo's data captures only part of Allianz-PIMCO's true footprint, meaning the $2.67bn figure is very likely an undercount.
That sum represents holdings filed directly under PIMCO's own fund vehicles – it does not include Israeli bonds purchased by PIMCO on behalf of external clients.
Across PIMCO's own funds and its hundreds of external mandates – pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurers worldwide – the true volume of Israeli bonds flowing through its operations is unknown, but certainly runs into several billions or more.
The American dimension
While Allianz-PIMCO is the dominant company buying Israel’s international government bonds, the US more broadly is the resounding pillar of foreign investment in these bonds.
US investors held $2.02bn as of March 2026 – up from $879m in November 2024. The growth is steady and ongoing, with no sign of reduction.
UK court allows Allianz to sue pro-Palestine activists Read More »
Pennsylvania-based Vanguard, the world's largest index fund manager, crossed $1bn in Israeli bonds for the first time in the March 2026 snapshot – and its trajectory is still rising.
Germany's dominance in the data is in some ways deceptive. Of the country’s $2.43bn in Israeli bond holdings, approximately 94 percent is managed by PIMCO from the US.
In other words: this is, overwhelmingly, an American story. US-domiciled money, managed by US firms, flowing into Israeli war bonds at an extraordinary pace.
Far below the US and Germany, the next largest holders of Israeli bonds, as of March 2026, are the UK ($149m), Canada ($101m), Italy ($53m), Switzerland ($46m) and France ($22m).
Together they, and all other countries, account for just nine percent of all non-Israeli holdings.
The concentration of American capital in Israeli bonds reflects, in part, the dominance of US asset managers in global fixed income markets, but also the depth of US support for Israel at the highest level of government and finance.
The contrast with Europe is striking.
While Germany – through Allianz-PIMCO – has dramatically increased its Israeli bond exposure, other European countries have been reducing theirs, or keeping their investments low.
In fact, the last few years has witnessed a wave of divestment from major European institutions.
'Across the West’s asset management industry, we're seeing divergence [from Israeli bonds] rather than convergence'
– Courtney Wicks, the Center for Monitored and Ethical Investment
For example: AkademikerPension, the Danish academics' pension fund, formally excluded Israel in September 2025.
Three months earlier, the Irish Strategic Investment Fund sold its Israeli sovereign bonds, while Norway's Government Pension Fund Global divested from 11 Israeli companies and excluded five Israeli banks.
"Across the West’s asset management industry, we're seeing divergence rather than convergence [especially between the US and much of Western Europe]," said Courtney Wicks of the Center for Monitored and Ethical Investment.
"Some managers are reducing their exposure to [Palestine-related] human rights concerns in response to political or reputational pressure, rather than strengthening conflict-sensitive stewardship frameworks."
That divergence is visible within the Allianz group itself.
In late 2025, Allianz's insurance arm dropped its coverage of Elbit Systems UK, the British subsidiary of the Israeli arms company, following sustained activist pressure.
At the same moment, its asset management arm was sitting on billions of dollars in Israeli government bonds.
In 2024 and 2025, pro-Palestine activists occupied Allianz offices in London and Guildford, spraying them in red paint in protest at the company's insurance of Elbit Systems.
Allianz is now pursuing a civil lawsuit worth nearly £300,000 against those activists – on top of criminal proceedings – after a London court ruled the case could proceed this week.
The activists, who cannot afford legal representation in the civil case, say the lawsuit is designed to suppress protest. Allianz, meanwhile, last year reported an operating profit of $20.1bn.
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