Revealed: How a German-US corporate giant became the world’s largest foreign financier of Israel’s wars

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.

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)

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…