Christies auction totals rise 36 percent
Published January 12th, 2007
Christie’s International, the world’s largest art seller, said its auction totals rose 36 percent last year to 2.5 billion pounds ($4.7 billion) as it sold a lion’s share of expensive paintings by Gustav Klimt and other artists.
The U.S. was the fastest-growing market for London-based Christie’s, which is owned by the French billionaire Francois Pinault. New York auctions totaled $2.1 billion, for a gain of 50 percent in U.K. pounds, the company said.
Christie’s and its rival Sotheby’s are benefiting from low interest rates and a 10-year trebling of contemporary prices that have made art an attractive investment for billionaires from Ronald Lauder in the U.S. to Hong Kong’s Joseph Lau. Sellers have been lured with promises of benefits such as minimum prices.
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