French tycoon François Pinault, acquired the Parisian auction group PIASA on February 29th 2000 less than ten days after Bernard Arnault, his rival, bought the Tajan group, France's number one. The war between the two French tycoons may well continue as Arnault is believed to be interested in taking a major participation in Sotheby's, a move which would finally enable him to deal on equal terms with Pinault, who acquired Christie's in 1998.
According to the deal concluded between François Pinault's holding Artemis and PIASA, the auction group will obtain appropriate financial means to ensure its development and offer better services to its customers in France and abroad.
There is no planned merger with Christie's yet and PIASA stressed that François Pinault's involvement in that deal was above all personal. PIASA ranked third in France last year with a turnover of 281 million FF (US 41.94 million) while Tajan reached first place but both groups were being considered as midgets compared with Christie's and Sotheby's which both recorded turnovers nearing US $ 2 billion last year.
Still, the battle between Pinault and Arnault was inevitable as both Sotheby's and Christie's would have probably experienced difficulties on receiving the green light to operate in France simply because they would have been forced to build up a solid list of French customers. Arnault won the first round with the acquisition of the Tajan group, which will be closely associated with the London-based auction house Phillips that he bought recently.
Pinault thus felt obliged to fight for the acquisition of PIASA, which will continue to operate at least until the end of 2003 or 2004 after the planned acquisition of all PIASA shares by Artemis.
Strangely enough PIASA was at one time the partner of Phillips but their association remained quite modest. On his part Bernard Arnault intends to regroup Tajan and Phillips in the former headquarters of the Antenne 2 TV channel, 22 avenue Montaigne, facing the Drouot-Montaigne salesrooms. However it seems unlikely that he will take the risk of buying a majority of Sotheby's shares at a time when the New York firm is the object of investigations by U.S justice thus facing the dire prospect of being imposed heavy fines if found guilty of breaching anti-trust laws.
While visiting Paris on March 2nd 2000, Robin Woodhead, executive vice-president of Sotheby's Holdings and a member of the board of directors of that company, denied all press allegations, notably regarding Alfred Taubman's reported intention to give up his major participation in Sotheby's.
“Mr Taubman does not intend to sell his shares. Thus, the idea of a possible acquisition of Sotheby's shares by Mr B. Arnault or e-Bay is totally unfounded,” Mr Woodhead said.
He added that Mr Taubman and Mrs D. Brooks faced absolutely no penal charges when they both decided to resign from their posts of Chairman and Director-General of Sotheby's a few days ago.
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