Reflecting on the trajectory of the British auction house’s development that he has overseen in Asia since January 2019, Francis Belin delves into the events of 2023 and anticipates the prospects of the Asian market. Supervising the nine regional offices across the continent in addition to Christie’s’ headquarters in Hong Kong, his global outlook sheds new insight on Christie’s’ challenges and strategy in Asia Pacific.
The New Paradigm of the Asian Market (Part 1/2)
In 2023, Christie’s’ auction sales in Asia totaled $805 million, accounting for approximately 16% of its global turnover of $5 billion. This figure excludes the contribution of Asian buyers to the private sales, which amounted to $1.2 billion globally. Notably, this international turnover of $6.2 billion marks a 26% decrease from the record $8.4 billion achieved in 2022, driven by the $1.6 billion Paul Allen collection. After a challenging year in 2022, the decline in 2023 is moderate in Asia Pacific – at -4% from $833 million in 2022 – compared to Western marketplaces: -43% (-12% excluding the Paul Allen sale) in the Americas and -9% in Europe. Asian, and in particularly Chinese collectors have returned in 2023 following a prolonged isolation due to the pandemic. Their “collecting appetite” is evident in the robust participation in global auction sales, which isn’t reflected in the Christie’s Asia’ turnover of $805 million either. Exerting an increasing influence in auctions held in Europe and the United States, Belin highlights the “strong participation of Asian collectors across the globe”, noting that they contribute to an average of 85% of sales in Hong Kong (in value), 28% at the global level (vs. 26% in 2022), and up to 41% in Geneva’s last sale in 2023. Three of the Top 10 lots in the New York 20th and 21st Century Evening sales last November, as well as the blue diamond sold in Geneva, were acquired by Asian buyers. Belin concludes that “defining Asia for Christie’s is first and foremost about buying.”
Francis Belin bidding at Christie’s Hong Kong Autumn Sales 2023
However, the landscape has shifted over the past decades. Francis Belin acknowledges that old collectors are not buying at the same level as before due to “a life cycle in collecting,” as “after 20 years of growth, certain players in the market start to mature in their collecting.” This shift towards more selective stakeholders materializes at Christie’s Hong Kong through “tightly curated and properly priced sales” by the specialists across all categories. While Christie’s Hong Kong used to offer higher volumes than Sotheby’s Hong Kong in its sales until the 2010s, the auction house has now decreased the number of lots to focus on the top end and the value of transaction. This concentration on high value lots has complicated the consignment process and intensifies competition with other auction houses. This comes as risk-taking strategies are no longer paying off since “it’s a very unforgiving market,” according to Belin, who underlines the “duty to sellers” as the “custodians of the art market.”
The aversion to trial-and-error is also evident in the development of guarantees, as confirmed by Belin. “It is true that we’ve seen in Asia quite an increase of guarantees in the past few years, especially for our evening sales.” However, he notes that this evolution remains uneven, stating, “There are still certain categories where there are very few requests,” particularly in Asian classical art. As for buyer’s credit and loans, Belin observes that Christie’s’ loan book has been growing but partly because it’s a new service introduced just two years ago. Ultimately, it remains a small ratio compared to the overall annual transactions of the auction house. In this regard, the latest edition of The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2023 emphasizes the importance of loans and credits involved in art purchases. The report states that 30% of High-Net-Worth (HNW) collectors had used credit or loans to finance art purchases in 2022 and in 2023. For Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) collectors who utilize lending, the average share of the value of their collections financed through credit was 39%, and “one third of this segment had financed over 50% of their collections with loaned funds,” according to Clare McAndrew, the author of the survey. Interestingly, Japanese and Singaporean collectors, following German collectors at the top, are among the HNW collectors who used credit or loans the most to finance art purchases, according to the same report.
