29 September 2022
12.30pm - 2pm

Lunch talk: How auction guarantees affect the sale of an artwork

As part of our exclusive members” events, we are pleased to invite you to an online conference (on Zoom): Lunch Talk: How auction guarantees affect the sale of an artwork on Thursday 29 September at 12:30

There is nothing more exciting than an auction where two bidders face each other and continuously drive up the hammer price until the hammer falls. Such bidding wars on “top lots”, i.e. works of art worth millions, are becoming increasingly rare. The reason: these works are already “pre-sold” because a guarantee has been agreed with the consignor. Accordingly, the consignor is promised a certain selling price – the guarantee price – which is paid out to the consignor in any case, regardless of what result is achieved for the work at the auction.

Christine Bourron, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Pi-eX Ltd, and Melanie Damani, Lawyer and Art Market specialist, will explain what auction guarantees are, how they work, and what impact they have in the art market. This panel (in English) will be moderated by Anne Laure Bandle, director of the Art Law Foundation.

 

The speakers

Melanie Damani is a lawyer specialised in wealth structuring and estate planning as well as an art market specialist. She is based in Geneva and works with UHNWI around their art collections, providing legal and management advices, in particular on how to pass it on to the next generation.

Melanie Damani is currently co-writing a book on Swiss inheritance law with Professor Audrey Leuba, Dean of the Law faculty of Geneva University. Prior to this mission, Melanie
Damani was Head of the Art advisory at Edmond de Rothschild Group in Geneva. She worked withing the Wealth solutions department, which aims to assist clients with protecting,
increasing and transferring their wealth over generation. She later founded and ran Hottinger Art Limited, a company providing art services for collectors of the Hottinger Group, a
multi-family office based in London.

Before developing her career as an art advisor, Melanie was a corporate lawyer practicing at top tier Swiss and international law firms. In her last role as a lawyer, Melanie was an associate within the Wealth management group of law firm Baker & McKenzie in Zurich. She advised individuals, trust companies, private banks and other financial institutions on a wide range of fiduciary issues including international tax, wealth and estate planning matters. She was also involved in mergers and acquisitions, general corporate, and intellectual property matters.

Melanie holds a MA (Hons) in Law from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, as well as a MA of laws (LL.M.) form the University of California at Berkeley. She also holds a MA (Hons) in Art Business from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art (London), jointly delivered by the University of Manchester. Melanie was presented with an award for Excellence in Business Development at the 2019 City of London Wealth Management Awards. Melanie is Swiss and Italian and practices in French, English, Italian and German.

 

 

Christine Bourron is the CEO and founder of Pi‐eX, a London based independent research company focusing on providing transparent data analysis and monthly reports highlighting the latest trends in the public auction market. Pi‐eX’s 12‐month rolling Auction Market Index (AMI) helps art collectors and investors optimize their investments by better understanding and managing risk and volatility in the fine art and luxury markets.

In 1998, Christine founded PaintingsDIRECT.com. Based in New York, the company represented more than 500 contemporary artists and was one of the first galleries to offer art online. Christine also worked for Corporate Decisions Inc., a strategy consulting firm in Boston, US, Apple Computer in Kiev, Ukraine, and Procter & Gamble in Paris, France.

Christine has been a member of PAIAM (Professional Advisors to the International Art Market) since 2017 and a Board member since 2019. She is often quoted in the press (The Financial Times, New York Times, The Art Newspaper, Artnews, The Art Market Monitor, Artnet, Artprice) and has recently published a peer‐reviewed article on the impact of the pandemic on the public auction market with a comparison of the Covid‐19 crisis versus the financial crisis and the 2016 crisis ( https://www.mdpi.com/2076‐0752/10/4/74).

 

 

Registration

This conference will be held in English.

Please register to participate at this online event by sending an email to Valerie Leuba at leuba@artlawfoundation.com, by Tuesday 27 September at noon.

The log in information will be sent to you on the same day early in the afternoon.

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