PARIS, July 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --
Following publication of the minutes of Artprice's AGM on
27 June 2014 together with a
presentation of Artprice's "Future Outlook" (link to the online pdf
file at the bottom of this page) that was discussed during the
meeting, there had been substantial demand from shareholders and
the market for further information.
The Artprice Group hereby confirms that it is considering
listing its 100%-owned subsidiary Artprice Inc. under the name
Artmarket.com on the Nasdaq (NSCM) or any other Anglo-Saxon stock
exchange in a country where online art auctions and the digital
economy are governed by a coherent set of regulations.
This is not the case in France
(see pdf file and quotes) where the country's auction market
supervisory authority (CVV - Conseil des Ventes
Volontaires) has been waging a constant battle for two years
against Artprice and Ebay involving the creation of legal
obstacles, which for a nation that accounts for just 4% of the
global art market, is perfectly illogical and
counter-productive.
The Artprice group, whose headquarters and stock market listing
will of course remain in France,
will therefore use its American subsidiary Artprice Inc.
USA (formerly Sound View
Press, created in 1976) renamed Artmarket.com, a generic and
previously-acquired DNS (Domain Name System / Internet code) that
Artprice has carefully protected.
For the initial public offering of Artmarket.com, the objective
will be to raise between USD 90 and 120
million, representing approximately 30% of its capital. The
exact amount will depend on market conditions at the time of the
operation.
The remaining 70% will be owned by Artprice group. The combined
value of the two companies' capitalizations will remain below that
of Artprice in January 2012 when the
French company launched its Standardized Auction Marketplace which
was interrupted by the CVV's damaging press release (see PDF
file).
Artmarket.com will therefore own proprietary IT infrastructures
for its Standardized Auction Marketplace and its Standardized
Fixed-price Marketplace in exchange for shares attributed to the
parent company Artprice.
Artprice will remain the full and rightful owner of its
historical client base and of its numerous standardized databases
that are covered by intellectual property rights and it will
receive an annual remittance for making them available to
Artmarket.com.
A set of contracts will regulate the fees and royalties that
allow Artmarket.com to exploit the knowledge acquired by Artprice -
world leader in art market information - and to benefit from the
mass of data accumulated since it created the Standardized
Marketplace in 2004.
Artprice's Standardized Marketplace has posted steady growth
ever since it started and was designed to develop its full
potential with the EU Directive on auction sales that was finally
transposed into French law in 2012.
After validation by the supervisory authorities, this set of
regulated agreements should - according to coherent assumptions -
generate a recurring income of 7 to 9
million euros p.a. for Artprice Group.
The relentless obstinacy of the Conseil des Ventes Volontaires
regarding internet art auctions and Artprice in particular, as well
as the economic prejudice suffered by Artprice (see pdf file) will
therefore be avoided by Artmarket.com, as a company operating in an
Anglo-Saxon jurisdiction where online art auctions are enjoying
rapid growth (see also Sotheby's-eBay alliance, 16 July 2014).
Minutes of Artprice AGM of 27 June 2014:
http://www.actusnews.com/communique.php?ID=ACTUS-0-36499
Direct link to pdf document included with the Minutes of the
AGM: http://serveur.serveur.com/Press_Release/2014_pdf/artprice-presentation-ago-2014_online.pdf
About Artprice:
Artprice is the global leader in art price and art index
databanks. It has over 27 million indices and auction results
covering more than 500,000 artists around the world. Artprice
Images(R) gives unlimited access to the largest Art Market resource in the world: a library of
108 million images or prints of artworks from the year 1700 to the
present day, along with comments by Artprice's art historians.
Artprice permanently enriches its databanks with information
from 4,500 auctioneers and it publishes a constant flow of art
market trends for the world's principal news agencies and
approximately 6,300 international press publications. For its
3,200,000 members (members log in), Artprice gives access to ads
posted by members. This space represents the world's leading
Standardised Marketplace® for buying and selling art. These sales
take place under two systems: either fixed price sales or
auction-sales (regulated by paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article L 321.3
of the French Code of Commerce).
Artprice is listed on the Euronext Paris SRD L.O. (Euroclear:
7478 - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF)
http://twitter.com/artpricedotcom
https://www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom
Discover the Alchemy and the universe of Artprice
http://web.artprice.com/video, which has headquarters at the famous
Museum of Contemporary Art, the Abode of Chaos.
http://goo.gl/mwsqp
https://vimeo.com/87859684
Contact : Josette Mey : e-mail :
ir@artprice.com