De Pury remains upbeat about Phillips’s prospects and explains the purchase this way: “I was approached back in the summer of 2007 by an [unidentified] friend of the owners of Mercury who expressed to me their interest in investing in the company. After that, I got to meet them, and what started as general talks led to conversations that intensified over the past few weeks and have culminated in the deal that we have done.”

He notes that the Mercury Group will leave the auctions to him and his team, doing its part in beefing up the company’s infrastructure and capital base. Meanwhile, de Pury shows no signs of curtailing his ambitions. “We want to expand our activities in Russia,” he says, “and we could not have a better partner to do that.” "Mercury Rising" originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's December 2008 Table of Contents.