Deal Broker

PARIS—François Pinault, the owner of Christie’s International, is making headlines again. He has ceded control of Piasa, his second auction firm, to a group of 14 business and media investors headed by Laurent Fabius, a French prime minister under François Mitterrand whose father, André, and late brother, François, were prominent Paris antiques dealers. According to Jacques Babonneau, the head of Piasa, Pinault wasn’t looking to sell, but the offer was one he couldn’t refuse.

Pinault, through his holding company, Artemis S.A, retains a 40 percent stake in the new company, Piasa Holding, with the investor group owning the other 60 percent. The deal, completed May 2 for an undisclosed sum, was masterminded by Babonneau, a career banker who worked in Brazil, Portugal and Singapore before being appointed director general of Piasa by Pinault in 2002. After a tricky 2006 for the company, marked by the retirement of its founders, Jean-Louis Picard and Lucien Solanet, Babonneau engineered a remarkable turnaround last year by introducing vendor guarantees and cash advances, pushing sales up 34 percent, to €48.7 million ($66 million). He is staying on as head of Piasa Holding, where his plans include launching Art Deco and design departments and hiring new staff members.

Babonneau, who is also on the Artemis payroll as financial adviser, expects the well-connected investors to bring in new consignors and help Piasa—the leading firm to sell exclusively at the Hôtel Drouot, the historic center of the Paris auction trade— to challenge Tajan for the number-four spot in the French auction world, behind Christie’s, Artcurial and Sotheby’s. “The quality of these investors sends out a strong signal,” says Babonneau, “and offers Piasa great prospects for the future.”

"Deal Broker" originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's July 2008 Table of Contents.