Artprice

outlook for 2015

Following publication of Artprice's 2014  AGM minutes on Actusnews, we have received shareholder and market requests for additional information this December regarding our outlook for the year 2015.

The Artprice Group confirms it plans to launch its 100%-owned subsidiary Artprice Inc. under the new name Artmarket.com on the Nasdaq (NSCM), or any other Anglo-Saxon market where online art auctions are governed by a coherent set of regulations vis-à-vis the digital economy.

In France (see pdf document and public statements), the Council of Voluntary Sales (CVV) has been doing everything possible for three years to block the development of this activity, particularly at Artprice and Ebay, by creating legal barriers, despite the European Directive ending the public auction monopoly that has existed since 1556.  The CVV's stance towards Artprice, with recurrent public statements such as "the internet giants Artprice and Ebay have created confusion among consumers" is a real brake on the growth of the digital economy.

These prohibitions to the free practice of art auctions on the Internet are beyond comprehension for a country like France, which now accounts for less than 4% of the global art market and less than 2% of the Contemporary art segment of that market.

Artprice's Global Art Market Annual Report (180 pages, to be published on February 26, 2015 exclusively via AFP, and then on March 3, 2015 on the websites of Artprice and its powerful institutional partner Artron in China) unfortunately confirms the continual decline of France share of the global art market since 1970, while the art market has been booming on all continents of the world.

Here is a brief excerpt from AFP Monde's communiqué regarding Artprice's 2014 semi-annual Art Market report:

"The global art market is in insolently good health"

On Wednesday, Artprice communicated the following information exclusively to the AFP: Having posted a 17% increase in turnover for the first half of 2014, exceeding $7 billion - a record high for the period - the global art market is in insolently good health.

According to the half-year figures communicated by the global leader in art market information, the French company Artprice, for the first six months of 2014, global art auction turnover, excluding fees, totaled 7.15 billion dollars (5.22 billion euros) compared with 6.11 billion dollars (4.66 billion euros) for the first half of 2013.

Founder and CEO of Artprice.com, Thierry Ehrmann, sums it up as follows, the The art market is hungry. we have grown from 500,000 collectors after WWII  to nearly 70 million today, a figure that includes professional and amateur collectors and enthusiasts at all levels.