Sunday, 8th November 2009

 

6 June 2008 - Press Briefing

Wealthy art connoisseurs gather at Basel auction

An $8m (€5.1m) Takashi Murakami sculpture was among early sales on Wednesday as Switzerland's Art Basel opened to invited guests, including Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and his partner Daria Zhukova, according to a Bloomberg report.

Sellers at the 39th fair are hoping the rich remain as eager to spend money as they were at contemporary-art auctions last month in New York at Sotheby's, Christie's International and Phillips de Pury. Those sales raised a record total of $971.5m with fees as buyers from emerging markets shrugged off the credit crisis.

“Business is perfectly lovely,” said Timothy Blum, co- owner of Los Angeles art dealer Blum & Poe. The gallery sold Murakami's 18 1/2 foot-high aluminum and steel sculpture, “Oval Buddha”, to a western European collector who Blum wouldn't name.

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Brummel

Relocation, relocation, relocation

Banks have never been shy of firing staff at the merest whiff of a downturn. First the fat, then the muscle and finally the bone. In the past, cuts have been so deep that firms have found it hard to benefit when the markets rebounded, paying over the odds to restaff at speed. Such wild oscillations in staffing numbers are known as “doing a Merrill”.

Rich Monitor

Sotheby's 3Q loss widens

Sotheby's third-quarter loss widened as the art auction house posted a worst-than-expected decline in revenue and a tax expense.

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