British auction house Christie’s yesterday said that it plans to expand its physical presence in Hong Kong by 2024 with galleries and salerooms more than four times larger than it currently has, betting on a growing art market in the territory and in Asia.
It is to become the first anchor tenant in a new skyscraper in central Hong Kong, leasing a total of 4,645m2 over four floors. The building, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and developed by Henderson Land, is due for completion in 2023.
Christie’s Asia-Pacific president Francis Belin told reporters that about 2,800m2 would be used for galleries and salerooms, compared with 650m2 in their current office.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“It’s hard for us to extend the sales, because we don’t have the real estate to do so,” Belin said.
Christie’s currently has to rent outside venues to hold large auctions and exhibitions.
At its planned headquarters, the auction house would be able to hold about six major all-week auction events a year, compared with only two currently that fall in spring and autumn, he said.
Christie’s US$458 million in sales recorded in Hong Kong in May was the highest since 2013 and came as the territory recovered from a COVID-19-induced economic contraction last year.
In the first half of this year, Asia accounted for a record 39 percent, or more than US$1 billion, of global sales, up from 20 to 25 percent pre-pandemic, surpassing Europe and North America.
“Hong Kong is the art center,” Belin said. “Nothing has dented the confidence in the art market here.”
GlobalData’s Wealth Market Analytics expects the population of high-net-worth investors with liquid asset above US$1 million in Hong Kong to rebound this year, and grow 12 percent to reach 243,320 individuals this year from 217,300 in pandemic-hit last year. Hong Kong has a population of 7.5 million.
Belin said the expansion would not lead to aggressive hiring in addition to their 200 staff in Hong Kong.
Christie’s is also looking for bigger space to relocate in Shanghai.
Christie’s in March became the first major auction house to sell a digital art piece that does not exist in physical form.
The artwork carried what is known as a non-fungible token, a unique digital token encrypted with the artist’s signature and which verifies its ownership and authenticity, and is permanently attached to the piece.
Christie’s sold close to US$100 million of digital artwork in the first half of this year, and Belin said such sales are bringing new and younger collectors to the auction house.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to