Art finance

An appeal to keep in the UK a ring once owned by Jane Austen received an anonymous £100,000 donation just days after it was launched.

Global sales for the first half of 2013 at Sotheby’s totalled $3.14bn (£2.05bn), their latest set of results reveal.

Several of the main French auction firms and French branches of international houses have produced their half-year sales figures.

The hiking of premiums in March does not appear to have put buyers off at Christie’s.

In 1987 the BBC interviewed Daimler-Benz’s former chief engineer, Rudi Uhlenhaut, and asked the 81-year-old about the firm’s post-War return to serious motor racing in the 1954-55 period.

Business is continuing to improve but the rate of recovery has slowed among London’s fine art dealers, their trade association’s latest survey reveals.

Business is best if you are at the top of the tree, according to the latest survey published by the British Antique Dealers’ Association.

The price of gold has continued to drop, falling to its lowest level in almost three years, after the US Federal Reserve said it will be winding down its quantitative easing programme.

There was a good vibe around the Asian art sales this year.

The latest series of Russian art auctions in London set a combined hammer total of £42.7m to make it the most lucrative since the market peaked in June 2008.

Paul Aitken, CEO of asset loan specialist borro, has revealed that art and antiques now account for 42% of the company’s loan book by value, with the more traditional asset loan categories of jewellery, watches and gold accounting for 48% and luxury and classic cars 10%.

Christie’s evening sale of Contemporary art in New York last night posted a hammer total of $435.5m (£294.2m).

Holding a major silver sale days after the melt price has plummeted by about £3 an ounce is hardly ideal timing.

Sotheby’s lost $22.3m from January to March 2013, more than twice the amount for the same period in 2012.

Fear that the dramatic fall in scrap gold and silver prices last week would hit the antiques market appear to have been allayed.

How do you convert a £9.4m Old Master painting into a capital gains tax-exempted “wasting asset”?

The annual cross-border customs figures have reinforced the United Kingdom’s status as one of the world’s two leading entrepot markets for art and antiques.

The latest TEFAF market report values the global art market at €43 billion for the last year. The figure was 7% down the previous year, but the fall is wholly explained by a €3.5bn decline in sales in China.

Christie’s have announced a new buyer’s premium structure that points to a period of heightened competition.

Leading Bond Street picture dealer Richard Green has made a stand for traditional art dealing and bricks-and-mortar galleries amid wider concern over the future of the trade.