An interesting WSJ article by Kelly Crow here . . . I wonder who Sotheby’s CEO Bill Ruprecht is referring to when he says he has spoken with “lots” of collectors who had invested with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, the New York firm that allegedly carried out a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. “I have clients for whom art is the sole liquid asset they own today,” he says.
Listen to one of Madoff’s clients, Miami businessman and former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman, whose lauded art collection (valued at $1 billion by Forbes in September) includes works by Picasso, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, David Smith, and Richard Serra, call Madoff a “first-class crook” here.
Apparently collectors are trying to get their hands on the art collection of another Madoff victim––financier J. Ezra Merkin, who owns a dozen or so Rothkos, which, according to a Bloomberg report, are worth between $150 million and $200 million alone.
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