Recruitment

Robert Brooks, who is in the middle of negotiations concerning the restructuring of Bonhams, says he is working to a target date of February 1 to complete his plans.

Christie’s are to make 23 staff redundant in Los Angeles, their second largest saleroom in America. The decision is part of an ongoing, worldwide cost-cutting programme undertaken by the company following the settlement of the $256m lawsuit over commissions and the downturn in the art market this year.

FRANCE: Francis Briest, France’s leading auctioneer of modern and contemporary art, is to join up with the modern art dealers and booksellers Artcurial (acquired by Nicolas Orlowski from Oréal in 1999).

MALCOLM HORD has announced that he is to retire as chief executive of LAPADA, the Association of Art and Antique Dealers, at the end of May next year.

Victoria Borwick, director of all fine art and antiques fairs at Olympia for the past eleven years, will leave the company after the November Fine Art and Antiques Fair. In a move which stunned the Trade, Mrs Borwick was told last week by Andrew Morris, the chief executive of Earls Court and Olympia, that her role as director of the fairs was redundant.

UK: LONDON’s art world was reeling last week with the shock announcement from Anthony d’Offay, one of the country’s leading and most influential contemporary art dealers, that he was to retire and close his West End galleries at the end of the year.

UK: JONATHAN Horne, the well-known British ceramics dealer, pictured centre, has been elected the new chairman of the British Antique Dealers Association. He follows John Bly, pictured left. Also pictured is the Rt Hon Peter Brooke CH, who has been elected President of the BADA for the seventh year.

ANGELA Nevill has been elected chairman of the Society of London Art Dealers and Christopher Battiscombe will take over as general secretary at the beginning of September from Neil Smith, who retires at the end of July.

The former chairmen of Christie’s and Sotheby’s last week were charged with a criminal conspiracy to fix the rates of commissions worth “at least $400 million”, in a dramatic twist to a four year US Government investigation into the two auction houses.

FRANCE: François Curiel, 52, is to replace Hugues Joffre as head of Christie’s France in an adminstrative shake-up that also sees the departure of Christie’s French Director-General Franck Prazan, who helped mastermind the firm’s transfer to their new premises on Avenue Matignon. Joffre and Prazan are both expected to leave the firm.

FRANCE: Francis Briest, France’s leading modern art auctioneer, has replaced Etude Tajan as the French member of International Auctioneers, becoming the tenth member of the worldwide auction grouping (alongside Lempertz of Cologne, the Vienna Dorotheum, Zurich’s Galerie Koller, Lawsons of Sydney, Swann Galleries of New York, Butterfields from California, Finarte Milan and Finarte Madrid).

LONDON: DESPITE there being no official announcement from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the papers have been full of the news that Mark Jones is to be the new director of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Sotheby’s Holdings have confirmed that eight per cent of their staff worldwide – around 165 employees – are to lose their jobs as part of a cost-cutting and restructuring programme.

SOTHEBY’S Holdings have announced their nominees for the firm’s board of directors, with shareholders due to vote on them at the delayed Annual Meeting in New York on August 3.

UK: AGNEW’S have strengthened their commitment to contemporary art with the appointment of Mark Adams as director in charge of the contemporary department.

US: THE sudden resignations of Sotheby's chief executive Diana 'Dede' Brooks and chairman Alfred Taubman have come in the wake of the investigation into alleged commission fixing which has seen the company's stock plummet by 60 per cent since the start of this year.

Phillips were making no comment last week following confident assertions in the Financial Times that a French takeover of the last of the top three auctioneers under UK ownership was imminent.

US: SOTHEBY’S have added a well known public face to their emerging Internet business with the appointment of Chris Jussel as senior vice president of their online auctions associate programme.

UK: THE rumour that the senior executives who have quit Phillips Edinburgh are to set up a rival auctioneers under the Lyon & Turnbull banner has been confirmed.

UK: FOLLOWING the sudden departure of two senior men, Graham Child and Joseph Friedman, from Sotheby’s furniture department in London, the auction house has appointed Simon Redburn as worldwide senior specialist of its English furniture department.