Auctioneers Figures

London: droit de suite holds no fears

Christie’s have announced £1.8bn ($3.2bn) in global sales for 2005, the highest total in the firm’s history and more than 30 per cent up on 2004.

Sales at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris rose 16 per cent in 2005 to €414m (£280m), but firms based elsewhere in the city also continued to increase their market share.

Helped by a £2.6m windfall, Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis emerged from 2005 as the largest-grossing UK provincial saleroom.

AUCTION revenues have leapt by nearly a half, year on year, for the third quarter of 2004 at Sotheby’s. But increased costs have meant that they have also registered a slightly bigger loss.

JACQUES Tajan is set to quit Tajan S.A., the firm he founded in 1994, over disagreements with the firm’s new owner Rodica Seward.

PABLO Picasso’s Garçon à la pipe boosted Sotheby’s second quarter sales considerably, alone accounting for about 9.5 per cent of the total.

THE first quarter of 2004 was good news for Sotheby’s, with several major stepping stones to putting their bottom line back on the straight and narrow.

ONLINE auction giant eBay have announced a record 59 per cent increase in turnover for the first quarter of 2004.

CHRISTIE'S have announced worldwide sales totalling £1.2bn ($2bn) for 2003. This includes auction sales of £1.1bn ($1.8bn) and private sales of £90m ($150m).

SOTHEBY’S have just published their fourth quarter and year-end results for 2003, showing the company to be in a much better financial state than at the end of 2002.

MUNICH-based auctioneers Ketterer Kunst reported “steady growth” in 2003 to post an auction turnover of €15.5m (£10.7m), boosted by the €5.7m Tremmel Collection in May.

Belgian rooms content but no more with 2003 performance: 2003 was a “slightly up-and-down year” for Horta of Brussels, according to firm director Jean-Pierre Julien, but he was satisfied with a four per cent increase in sales from 2002, making it Horta’s most lucrative year since they were founded in 1982.

Brightwells Fine Art, the Leominster based saleroom covering the Marches, Wales and the West Midlands announced their turnover for the year ended December 2003, which, including premium, was £3.16m.

EBAY, the great survivors of the dot-com boom and bust, have again posted a record set of results to complete a remarkable year in which the company reaped revenues of over $2bn. There were 41 million people who have bid, bought or listed on eBay over the past 12 months.

Despite the unpredictable trading conditions of the last 12 months, Tennants posted record trading figures for 2003. Aided by a bumper £1.62m autumn catalogue sale, total sales at The Auction Centre, Leyburn from January to December 2003 were £8.44m (not including premium), a substantial improvement upon the previous year when the North Yorkshire operation posted hammer sales of £7.4m.

Despite a year that saw substantial declines in brown furniture prices and a tailing off in the demand for general silver, most of the UK’s top provincial auctioneers held steady in a difficult market.

SOTHEBY’S chief executive Bill Ruprecht is bullish about the company’s second quarter performance, reporting a 25 per cent increase in net income on the same period last year.

eBay have reported a record $266.3m turnover for the second quarter of the year ending June 30, a 47 per cent increase on the same period last year. Of this, $235.3m came from online transactions.

Sales by members of the Paris Compagnie des Commissaires-Priseurs (i.e. all Paris auctioneers bar Christie’s and Sotheby’s) fell 15 per cent in the first half of 2002 to €290m (£187m), as compared to the first six months of 2001.