IRELAND AUCTIONS BUST TYCOON’S ART TO PAY OFF SUB-PRIME DEBTS
DEREK Quinlan is not a name you will have read much about recently, after the troubled property tycoon decided to lie low on the shores of Lake Geneva while he contemplated his sizeable debts to Anglo Irish Bank.
But he was back in the spotlight yesterday, when Quinlan’s $2.8m art collection came under the hammer at Christie’s through Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), in an attempt to claw back some of the hundreds of millions of euros that were lost when Quinlan’s over-leveraged empire went spectacularly bust.
The Capitalist didn’t bid for any of the 11 artworks in the sale of 20th Century British and Irish Art – prices started at £40,000 – but others raised their hands enthusiastically, with Still Life Variation 2 by Irish master William Scott going for £385,250.
The London sale in St James’s followed a sale of two of Quinlan’s paintings on 9 November in New York, where Dollar Sign by Andy Warhol went for $782,500 (£497,357) and Robert Motherwell’s Arches Cover raised $74,500 (£47,352).
In total, says The Capitalist’s man at the auction, Quinlan’s art assets fetched £1.65m – a fraction of the $42.7bn (£27.1bn) of mortgage loans Anglo Irish Bank is stuck with following Ireland’s precipitous housing crash, but a start nonetheless….
RAZOR-LITE
HIS SISTER Helena Bonham-Carter famously “grew” a full face of facial hair to play a monkey in the film Planet of the Apes. And, ten years later, her brother Edward, chief executive of Jupiter Asset Management, is doing his best to follow suit as part of 53 members of his firm’s fundraising efforts for Movember.
Bonham-Carter and his razor-challenged team – which includes John Chatfeild-Roberts, Philip Johnson and star performers Philip Ehrmann and Anthony Nutt – are currently second in Movember’s UK league table, with £17,000 raised for prostate cancer.
Elsewhere on the leaderboard of the City’s most hirsute at the half-month point are Barclays on £10,415, Citi on £11,603 and BNP Paribas on £15,670.
ESPIRITO GIVING
TO THE PATERNOSTER Chop House, where Espirito Santo Investment Holding’s co-CEO Nick Finegold (below) was refreshing himself at the bar following the bank’s charity trading day, which raised €500,000 for the Execution Noble charitable trust.
Those of you with long memories will remember the trust was set up in 2002, a year after Finegold founded Execution, which then merged with Noble. So Execution Noble’s global COO Damien Devine was out for a few drinks, backed up by ESIH co-chief executive Luis Luna Vaz and about 100 of the bank’s clients.
“Without the clients, this wouldn’t have been possible,” said Finegold. “People think this is a Pavlovian response to tough times – it is not, we have been doing it for ten years.”
SPORTS CLUB
MOVE over Facebook – the City has a new social networking addiction: Tribesports, the LinkedIn for sports fans launched by ex-Mydeco entrepreneur Steve Reid.
The site was introduced by stealth this autumn with closed funding of $400,000 and remains in beta for now. But 150,000 members have already signed up in 77 countries around the world, with the top users returning over 400 times a month.
That’s four whole days certain busy professionals are spending talking to fellow “tribe members” on online forums for 360 pursuits including ultimate frisbee, martial arts and, er, bouldering. “It is becoming a bit of an addiction,” said one early adopter.
LIES, DAMN LIES…
HOLD the front page: some dazzling “insights” have landed in The Capitalist’s inbox. Apparently, revealed the hot-off-the-press survey, smart workwear is perceived as “more professional” than casual dress, while 92 per cent of respondents say poor time-keeping is “a turn off” for bosses.
As is time-wasting by inventing spurious statistics to PR your business. Workwear “specialist” Alexandra, The Capitalist is afraid that means you.
SEX IN THE CITY
OKAY, the headline’s got your attention – now read on if you are single and ideally, a male American banker with no fixed plans for celebrating Thanskgiving.
If you fit the admittedly specific bill and are able to leave the office at a reasonable hour next Thursday 24 November, then you are wanted at the Thanksgiving dinner at Le Caprice organised by Kai Akram, founder of the London Dinner Club. See http://www.londondinnerclub.org