TheChek News Flow

North American operations set to be listed under break-up plan unveiled alongside announcement of new CEO

The Swiss cement giant Holcim plans to spin off its North American business and list it in the US, as it seeks to unlock value and speed up growth for the unit.

The Zug-based group also announced that the head of its European business, Miljan Gutovic, would take over as group chief executive from May. Outgoing chief Jan Jenisch will remain chair and lead the planned break-up.

“We are too successful in North America, we are too big to manage this as a subsidiary,” Jenisch told the Financial Times. “We have all the tools, we have all the supply chain in place. But we needed more focused management.”

Holcim was formed nearly a decade ago from the merger of France’s Lafarge and Switzerland’s Holcim, a deal that created the world’s largest cement company. But the combination was complicated by competing egos among senior leadership, and an earlier scandal involving payments by Lafarge to terrorist organisations in Syria dogged the company in the wake of the deal.

Holcim’s shares subsequently struggled to gain ground. Under the plan laid out on Sunday, Holcim will complete a “full capital market separation” of its North American business, with the final structure of the spin-off due to be finalised later this year and the US listing expected to complete in the first half of 2025 once shareholder approval has been obtained.

European companies have looked to US listings for the higher valuations and greater market liquidity and analyst coverage they can bring. CRH, the world’s largest building materials group, last year moved its primary listing from London to New York. Its shares have climbed almost 50 per cent over the past year, with CRH now valued at £39.2bn ($49.8bn).

Although Holcim has a market capitalisation of about SFr37.2bn ($43.1bn), Jenisch said the North American business could be valued in the “ballpark” of $30bn despite just accounting for about 40 per cent of sales last year.

The North American business is estimated to have generated about $11bn of net sales in 2023, but the company said it aimed to increase that to more than $20bn by the end of the decade as it sought to capitalise on a boom in construction and US infrastructure investment sparked by Biden administration policies.

It has about 850 sites and 16,000 employees across the US and Canada, and has built up the North American business with acquisitions. It agreed to buy Firestone Building Products from Japan’s Bridgestone Corporation for $3.4bn in 2021.

The company had a “pipeline of acquisition projects” in the US, Jenisch told the FT. Having US-listed shares to help fund acquisitions would further aid the North American business’s dealmaking efforts, he said.

“Decarbonisation and M&A” would also drive growth at the Swiss-based business after the spin-off, the company said.

Makers of building materials such as Holcim have fallen out of favour with more climate-conscious investors in recent years, because of the carbon footprint of products such as cement and concrete. Holcim has sought to shift its business towards greener construction in recent years, and emphasised its role in “decarbonising building”.

Holcim will remain listed in Switzerland after the spin-off, with a presence across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger quit regional bloc in escalation of tension West African states accuse Ecowas of being a threat to its members and under the influence of foreign powers

West African states accuse Ecowas of being a threat to its members and under the influence of foreign powers

Three west African states ruled by military juntas said they were leaving a key regional economic bloc in response to sanctions and pressure to hold democratic elections, in a sign of rising tensions in the region.

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger said in a joint statement that they were leaving the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) with immediate effect, marking a significant deterioration of relations between the 15 states that until now formed the bloc.

Following recent coups, Ecowas had already suspended the three nations from the union, which promotes economic integration and freedom of movement.

The group imposed sanctions on Niger after its democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum was removed from office in a coup in July, measures that included the closure of all air and land borders, the freezing of state assets and the prevention of financial transactions with other institutions in the bloc.

The sanctions cut Niger off from the two countries from which it imports most of its food and other essentials — Benin and Nigeria — leading to skyrocketing food prices in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Mali has been under the rule of its current military junta since coups in 2020 and 2021, while a junta led by army captain Ibrahim Traoré has been in power in Burkina Faso since October 2022.

The three countries claimed the Ecowas sanctions were “inhumane and irresponsible” and a “violation” of the bloc’s own rules. They also said the bloc was “under the influence of foreign powers”, arguing it had become a “threat” to its members.

An Ecowas spokesperson said on Sunday it had not received any “direct formal notification” that the three nations were exiting the bloc.

France and the US have condemned the coups, with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been forced to withdraw troops from all three countries, saying in September that he was “very worried” about the region.

Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali have deepened ties since Bazoum was removed from office. He was the west’s last reliable ally in the Sahel, a semi-arid strip south of the Sahara where Russia has begun to exert its influence.

All three countries face significant levels of insecurity caused by al-Qaeda and Isis-linked Islamist insurgents, which have wreaked havoc for more than a decade, killing thousands and leaving millions more displaced.

They formed the Alliance of Sahel States in September with the stated aim of providing mutual protection in the face of external aggression or rebellion from within. It was set up in part as a retaliation against Ecowas’s threat of military action against Niger last year if Bazoum, who remains in detention, was not reinstated as president.

Nigeria’s foreign minister Yusuf Tuggar told the FT in an interview last week that the sanctions on Niger would only be lifted if Bazoum and his allies were released.

Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group is active in Mali and Russian soldiers were deployed to Burkina Faso last week. Moscow also reopened its embassy in the Burkinabé capital Ouagadougou for the first time in three decades.

The move to quit Ecowas came after a delegation from the economic bloc failed to make it to Niger on Thursday for mediation talks due to a faulty aircraft, leading the junta’s prime minister to criticise the bloc for its “bad faith”.

Miss Tweed : Bondholders seek to block Farfetch sale to Coupang

Online fashion retailer Farfetch faces a new battle. A group of bondholders, including the U.S. activist hedge fund Fir Tree Partners, is seeking to block its sale to Korea’s Coupang by demanding immediate repayment of the $400 million they loaned the London-based company.

The investors are backed by fellow creditors Richemont and Chinese online giant Alibaba. Together, they are trying to force Farfetch to sell as many assets as possible to raise funds and get some of their money back before the sale to Coupang is completed.

Alibaba and Richemont each hold $300 million in 2030 convertible notes, which they could turn into shares in mid 2026. Earlier this month, Richemont said it had written off the value of its Farfetch notes. Together with Alibaba, it is now happy to make the bet that the group of investors will succeed in squeezing some cash out of Farfetch so that it can recover some of its lost funds.

“Richemont and Alibaba are supportive and agree with the steps that have been taken,” a person involved in the investors’ proceedings against Farfetch told Miss Tweed.

Analysts estimate that Richemont has lost more than €4.5 billion on its various e-commerce ventures in the past 15 years, including Yoox-Net-A-Porter (YNAP) and its failed partnership with Farfetch. That’s the amount of operating profit its jewelry brands Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Buccellati generated in its last fiscal year to March 2023.

As far as Farfetch is concerned, it will be remembered as the company that burned more than $5 billion of investors’ money in 16 years. When Farfetch delisted on Dec. 30, the company’s backers – which included major Silicon Valley venture capital firms and Artemis, the Pinault family’s investment company – lost their entire investment, or several tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Disappointed by what happened and by Farfetch CEO José Neves, many senior directors have jumped ship in the past few weeks, turning Farfetch into a zombie company. Its more than 6,000 staff, the majority of whom are based in Portugal, do not know if they will still have a job in six months.

Farfetch’s financial meltdown has had ripple effects. It spooked Apax Partners, the controlling shareholder of British online fashion retailer MatchesFashion. After the private equity firm found out what happened with Farfetch, it called it a day and was no longer willing to put in a further £40-50 million to keep the company afloat. It launched an accelerated sale process and within weeks, on Dec. 20, MatchesFashion was sold to Frasers Group for £52 million, a fraction of the more than £750 million Apax paid for it in 2017.

The next deal will be Richemont’s sale of YNAP. The Swiss group said it had received approaches from potential buyers and planned to offload the business within a year. YNAP’s more than 4,000 staff are also wondering what their fate will be.

The recent wave of consolidation is making the industry think hard about the online fashion retail business model and its future. Truth is, no one has figured out how to make money selling fashion wholesale online. Even Mytheresa, which is good at selling brands’ stories and curating looks, is struggling in the current downturn.

Brands prefer to invest in their own e-commerce websites and bricks-and-mortar boutiques than to build partnerships with third-party online distributors, whom they need much less now than during the pandemic when shops were closed. In the past two years, brands have imposed harsher payment and business terms on online distributors and have withheld stock of their bestsellers, keeping those for their own boutiques and websites. Add to this an environment in which consumers are reluctant to splurge on fashion and luxury due to inflation and higher interest rates, and how are online fashion wholesalers supposed to make money? The question is particularly relevant given how expensive it is to run an e-commerce fashion business due to the technology investments required and the high costs incurred from storing, shipping and returns.

NOTICE OF DEFAULT

Activist investor Fir Tree together with more than ten other investment companies, managing more than $1 trillion of assets and representing more than 50 percent of Farfetch’s 2027 convertible notes, formed a coalition called the 2027 Ad Hoc Group.

On Thursday, the group issued a notice of default against Farfetch, demanding immediate repayment of their $400 million notes. The default was triggered by the delisting of Farfetch from the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 30. Due to regulatory requirements, the group had to wait until this week to file the notice to the London company.

At the end of April, when the exclusivity period with Coupang ends, Farfetch is planning to file for bankruptcy, which will last only a few hours. That way it can wipe out and reduce to zero all of its debts and Coupang can come in and save the company by injecting $500 million in cash. The process is called a pre-pack administration. It’s precisely what the bondholders are trying to prevent. If it happens, they will never get any money back.

BATTLE WITH CREDITORS

As the battle with creditors started in earnest this week, several people close to the matter said they would be “very surprised” if the U.S. stock market watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission, had not launched a preliminary investigation into Farfetch. Investors want to know if they were misled about the company’s growth and profitability prospects. The SEC cannot comment publicly on ongoing investigations.

The Farfetch bondholders also question the company’s honesty and transparency. In a statement issued on Friday, they said they had “serious concerns about how Farfetch went from guiding the market to year-end 2023 liquidity of over US$800 million in August 2023 to a distressed sale four months later.”

“At the time of the announcement of the agreement” [on Dec. 18], the statement said, “analyst consensus (including its house broker JPMorgan) estimated Farfetch’s enterprise value to be in excess of $3 billion. As such, the Group is seriously concerned by the rapid and unexplained deterioration in the financial position of Farfetch between August and December 2023.”

When the deal with Richemont fell apart in November, Neves understood that the company was not going to get the revenue it expected from working with the group’s brands and replatforming of YNAP, in which it was to take a 47.5 percent stake. That’s when it started actively looking for a white knight.

“The deal with Coupang was done in a week and a half,” one person with first-hand knowledge of the matter said.

A spokesperson for the 2027 Ad Hoc Group was quoted in the statement issued Friday as saying: “The Group believes this process sets an incredibly dangerous precedent. Allowing this transaction to complete fails to maximize the value of the assets of the Company, at a time when at least three other credible parties were publicly reported to be interested in all or parts of the business. The Group is urgently considering appropriate next steps.”

The bondholders said that if Farfetch failed to honor its debt, they would challenge the sale to Coupang through various mechanisms, including litigation. They have denounced the deal’s poison pill of $1 billion. That’s the fee that will have to be paid to the lending firm Greenoaks if a company submits a rival offer in compensation for terminating the agreement between Farfetch, Coupang and Greenoaks. Greenoaks is a major investor in Coupang but also in companies such as Stripe and Deliveroo. It is financing Coupang’s purchase of Farfetch and providing the $500 million liquidity. Coupang, a fast-delivery company and marketplace, is also lossmaking and leveraged to the hilt.

“The Group believes that better value for the assets of Farfetch could be achieved through alternative routes than the proposed sale, including a break-up sale of the assets to interested bidders, several of whom have been publicly identified,” the bondholders said in the statement. “There appears to have been no transparency or governance in this process, which has reportedly left many of Farfetch’s luxury retail partners uncomfortable and considering severing ties.” Miss Tweed was first to report that some luxury groups, such as Kering, were considering exiting Farfetch, a fact that the French group never publicly denied.

SELLING ASSETS

In the past three years, Farfetch has spent more than $1.2 billion on acquisitions. The bondholders think Farfetch could raise considerable amounts by selling some of its most liquid assets, such as its stake in Neiman Marcus, estimated to be worth several hundreds of millions of dollars. Also on the market is Farfetch’s fashion company New Guards Group (NGG), the distributors and manufacturers of streetwear brands Off-White, Palm Angels, Heron Preston and Alanui. On their own websites as well as on the Farfetch marketplace, the brands are now selling many of their products at a 65 percent discount. The pressure is on to turn stock into cash.

Italian fund Style Capital has reportedly been interested in making a bid for NGG, but no concrete deal has been put on the table yet. It’s not clear what will be left of NGG by the time it’s sold. Several key managers have left, sources close to the company say. That includes the commercial team, the executive in charge of digital and the legal team. The communications director of Off-White also resigned recently, the sources say. NGG’s revenues in 2022 are estimated to have exceeded $650 million.

Last year, designers Nicolò and Carlotta Oddi, the founders of Italian knitwear brand Alanui, demanded that NGG buy their 49 percent stake as part of their shareholders’ agreement. NGG owns 51 percent of Alanui, a young brand generating around €30-€40 million in annual sales and a few millions in underlying profit. “It’s not clear where Farfetch will find the money to buy them out,” a senior source close to NGG said.

The list of people angry at Farfetch and Neves keeps getting longer every month. Who would have thought the adventure would end that way when the 34-year-old Portuguese entrepreneur launched Farfetch in 2008, helping brick-and-mortar distributors to sell their stock online? The Russians have a great proverb: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

Sphera Tech fund was one of the top Israeli hedge funds last year with 29% returns. "Globes" talks to its senior managers.

2023 saw huge volatility on markets with overseas stock exchanges rising by tens of percentage points leaving the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) far behind. The TASE's tepid performance followed the judicial overhaul and the large-scale public protests against it, and then from October the outbreak of the war.

So how did Israel's hedge funds - which are supposed to yield better returns for investors through a range of investment options and hedging, financial and leveraging instruments - perform in these uncertain market conditions.

An examination of Israeli hedge fund performances by "Globes" found that Israel's most prominent hedge funds were for the most part up to the job. Most of these funds invested in equity options and managed to register an excess return over the main local indices, on average producing a return of 11.5% - significantly higher than the Tel Aviv 125 Index which only rose by 4% in 2023. The reason was the increasing focus by the funds on investments abroad, where the indices produced much better performances. However, over the last three years, the performance of these funds is more lukewarm - they rose on average by 16.4%, while the Tel Aviv 125 index rose by 20.3%.

Even the prominent hedge funds that focus on bonds excelled in 2023 with average returns of 10.2%, double the returns of the Tel Bond 60, which includes the biggest corporate bonds on the TASE. Over the past three years these funds recorded average annual returns of 23%, far outperforming the Tel Bond 60, which rose by just 3.4%.

The yield leaders in the hedging industry last year were those funds that invest in technology-biased stock indices, or simply in prominent stock indices abroad such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. In 2023, funds who "stuck" to these stocks enjoyed a phenomenal return of tens of percent, after a difficult year in 2022 in which technology stocks and indices fell abroad, due to the jump in interest rates and the surging inflation that afflicted the world.

Lukewarm figure in veteran fund

Sphera senior executives say that they recognized the potential inherent in investing in technology stocks, precisely at the stage when the indices fell. Sphera is one of the oldest hedge fund groups in Israel, founded 20 years ago by the late Israel Mor, Doron Breen and Ron Senator.

The Group's veteran hedge fund, known as Masterfund, or Sphera LP, suffered heavy losses in the first half of the year, later recovered and ended 2023 unchanged - a weak figure relative to the industry. The fund explained in a letter to investors that "In retrospect, the process of changing the structure of the investment portfolio and adapting it to the political and economic environment was not sharp and fast enough. We were led to think that logic and common sense would dictate the political and economic agenda in Israel during the year."

However, when it comes to the technology fund it founded - Sphera Tech - it was a different story. This is a fund that managed to secure second place in the returns table after more than $500 million was raised from investors in Israel and abroad, a huge amount in Israeli terms (a minimum $500,000 per investor). This fund gave investors a return of 29% last year.

Sphera Tech invests in global tradeable tech companies with a market cap between $5 billion and $50 billion. The fund stated in its letter to investors for the start of 2024 that it will focus on the field of AI "which is changing direction and moving to a new phase." The fund also anticipates accelerated growth in cybersecurity, due to regulatory instructions and consolidation procedures in the field. Others believe that the time has come to invest in solar energy.

Among companies that interest Sphera Tech is transport app Uber. "We have been following Uber since Covid, and are particularly impressed by the growth strategies in its core business," the fund's website says, observing that a stable duopoly of Uber and Lyft has been formed in the US. They also state that they are interested in the food delivery market.

"Balanced exposure to high-tech"

The timing of the raising of the fund in September 2022, as tech indices fell, was successful, Sphera Tech Fund's founder Ron Senator claims. Talking to "Globes," he insists that the best time to found a fund is precisely when the the market looks bleak. He says, "Precisely when no one is 'throwing money at you' for investment, you know it's the best time to start a fund." Sphera Tech is managed by Nadav Zeller, who joined Sphera as an analyst in 2012 and is a managing partner in the Sphera Tech Fund, and Eli Uzan, who previously managed part of Facebook's operations in Israel and held senior positions at Google Israel.

What was the rationale behind founding the fund?

Senator: "We had been toying with the idea for over a decade. The fund was born as a result of the 'ecosystem' that emerged in Israel. We are known as a 'Start-Up Nation'; there is a lot of enthusiasm, motivation and stories of startups and technologies and innovation here.

"We wanted to take the attention away from investments made in technology companies in their early stages, towards investments in more mature companies. So far, nothing has been built and developed here that focused on such companies. The fund we established looks globally at the field of technology, and not just at Israel, which from the fund's point of view is another angle."

Last year there was a lot of talk about the Magnificent Seven - the shares of the tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Facebook and Tesla, which were responsible for a large part of the rises in the Wall Street indices. Senator said, "We manage the exposure in a more balanced way. We will not hold 10% of the investment portfolio in Microsoft shares (weight in the Nasdaq index). This is not part of our discipline.

Much has been said about the Magnificent Seven but are any of you interested in investing in them?

Uzan: "I am optimistic when I look at Meta (Facebook). Its stock suffered from several factors such as the TikTok threat. In the past, Meta had a significant impact on investment returns that advertisers saw, and also disappointment from investment in the field of the Metaverse (virtual reality). They overcame the return on investment problems of advertisers using Generative AI. Today Meta analyzes, for example, how long users spend on the various apps in order to give them accurate advertisement targeting."

What is your advantage in working from Israel?

Zeller describes the Israeli tech industry as one that is maturing and producing knowhow that is required by investors. "There has been an evolution here among Israeli tech companies in the last decade," he says. "If in the previous decade companies were thinking about how to sell themselves, today they are thinking about how to maximize business potential of the technology. Global companies are also using Israel, or in R&D here."

Uzan: "In the end we realized that we can get direct access to a lot of information from mature technology companies (here). It's easy to reach people here to do proper checks on a company. We can deeply analyze investment ideas (theme) and examine new trends."

Don't you think the AI trend has become a bubble in the markets?

Senator doesn't think so. He mentions that the AI sector is expected to undergo a gradual process of evolution. "In the beginning there were the chips (chip manufacturers for the field such as Nvidia) that is - the material, then came the cloud, and later came Israeli companies such as Wix (producer of websites) and monday.com (optimizing procedures in the workplace). These can now take advantage of AI and produce added value."

Senator also recalls that in 2000, when the previous tech bubble burst in the markets, companies on Nasdaq traded "according to irrelevant multiples and values. People invested in companies and didn't see any money from it."

Whereas today, Senator stresses, these are strong and profitable companies of a different order of magnitude, which are not afraid to become more efficient when necessary. "In recent years, Meta has cut a quarter of its workforce, Microsoft has made capital investments of $30 billion, and a super-aggressive efficiency campaign has been launched there."

How does the war that broke out in Israel affect technology activity?

Senator: "Most of the companies here are in the software sector, so there are no effects in production and supply chains. I can't think of a single Israeli company that in the fourth quarter was affected by the war. This is an estimate before the reports are published, but if there was a worsening of their situation, they would have reported it. In general, many of the companies here are global."

The industry has consistently grown

Hedge funds are not designed for every investor. They are only open to qualified investors, those with liquid capital of at least NIS 8 million and institutional entities. This is not a cheap product. The management fees charged by the fund managers are much higher than those of the investment instruments open to the public - around 2% of the investment amount annually. On top of that, hedge fund managers charge a success fee of 20% of the return they achieved during the year. The exit mechanism is also not immediate and involves advance notice, and the money is only received after several months.

The hedging industry, to which many of Israel's most prominent investment managers have moved, enjoys higher pay and greater freedom of action, and is steadily growing. Data from the Gilboa indices that follow the industry show that at the end of 2023 there were 177 hedge funds operating in Israel that managed assets worth $16.4 billion, 3% up on 2022.

The average hedge fund in Israel manages assets worth $92 million. About 23% of the funds manage investments focusing on Israeli stocks, another 18% on global stocks, about 17% invest in diversified strategies and 13% in the debt market (the balance invests in diverse fields).

Returns data for 2023 show that Shahar Cohen's Lucid Alternative hedge fund, which calls itself "the fund of the 'geeks'" led the table above Sphera Tech. Lucid ended the year with returns of 36.3%. Cohen previously managed the tech trust fund of the More investment house, and has served in various positions in Silicon Valley, and founded Lucid in May 2022.

These two funds outperformed the S&P 500 index, which rose 22% in 2023, but underperformed compared with Nasdaq, which rose 43% last year. Also highly ranked was Altshuler Shachem's Netz hedge fund, with returns of 21% last year (before including December data). However, over the past three years, Netz recorded a similar return.

At the bottom of the return table of equity funds was the Sphera LP hedge fund, which broke even in 2023, and rose by 11.3% over the last three years. Just above it was Guy Partners' Equity Opportunities Fund, which rose 2% last year and fell 4.5% over three years.

Outstanding among the bond funds last year was Var Opportunities, managed by Matan Pasternak, with a return of 19.7%, and 55% over the last three years. At the bottom of the table was Noked Bonds, with a return of 6.8% in 2023, and up 14.9% over the past three years.

In a letter to investors sent by the Noked hedge fund, led by Roy Vermus and Shlomi Bracha, formerly of Psagot investment house, cautious optimism was expressed for 2024 on the Israeli market. They say, "Economic activity in Israel is already expected to return to the growth that the economy showed on the eve of the war. The recovery of the economy and a certain fading of security uncertainty at the end of the main phases of the Gaza war are expected to have a positive effect on the local stock market performance."

LONDON — A group of institutional investors is contesting the proposed purchase of Farfetch by Coupang, and plans to fight for the money it believes is owed to them by the fashion e-commerce platform, which filed for administration late last year.

Bond holders in possession of more than half of Farfetch’s 3.75 percent convertible senior notes, due in 2027, said in a statement on Friday they were “mobilizing to challenge” Coupang’s proposed purchase of Farfetch.

They also argue that Coupang has undervalued Farfetch, and that Farfetch was not transparent with regard to its financial difficulties in the months leading up to the fire sale on Dec. 18.

As reported, Farfetch was sold in a pre-pack administration deal that saw Coupang inject $500 million into the troubled company and take 100 percent ownership. As a result, all shareholders, including founder José Neves, saw their investments wiped out.

A pre-pack administration in the U.K. means that a rescuer for a troubled business is found, and a sale is negotiated before the administrators step in.

In their statement, the bond holders said “allowing this transaction to complete fails to maximize the value of the assets of the company at a time when at least three other credible parties were publicly reported to be interested in all, or parts, of the business.”

In December, before the sale, WWD was the first to report that Carmen Busquets, known for her savvy, early-stage investments in tech-driven brands, was looking to raise between $500 million and $1 billion to rescue Farfetch. She proposed a five-year plan with the aim of driving fast growth and profitability.

“Fundamentally, I believe in the fashion and technology marketplace sector and I believe Farfetch remains the leading company in the industry. It has driven fundamental change to the distribution of fashion globally over the last 15 years,” Busquets told WWD in a story published on Dec. 13.

The bond holders, who have combined assets under management of more than $1 trillion, said they have appointed Pallas Partners as legal counsel and Ducera Partners as financial advisers to pursue their case.

The group said it was working “to urgently evaluate options to protect its interests in the face of the value destruction that it believes will be effected should the Coupang sale go ahead.”

As part of its action, the group has declared a default of the 2027 Notes, which means they are “immediately due and payable in full.” The group did not specify the amount of money it is seeking.

The group said the default arose from the suspension of trading and delisting of Farfetch from the New York Stock Exchange, which was imposed by the NYSE as a result of the proposed sale to Coupang.

In addition, the bond holders group said it has “serious concerns” about how Farfetch went from guiding the market to fiscal full-year liquidity of more than $800 million in August 2023, to a holding a distressed sale four months later.

It also noted that [in August 2023], analyst consensus estimated Farfetch’s enterprise value to be in excess of $3 billion.

“As such, the group is seriously concerned by the rapid and unexplained deterioration in the financial position of Farfetch between August and December 2023,” the statement said.

The bond holders added they are concerned about what they describe as a poison pill measure put in place by Coupang and its investment partner, the San Francisco-based firm Greenoaks Capital.

“If Farfetch pursues an alternative transaction, any competing bidder would, in effect, have to pay a $1 billion fee [which] risks making it unviable for any other bidders to present an alternative, value-maximizing offer,” the group said.

It added that “better value for the assets of Fartetch could be achieved through alternative routes than the proposed sale, including a break-up sale of the assets to interested bidders.”

A spokesperson for Coupang declined to comment. Farfetch did not immediately return a request for comment.

As reported, as a result of the sale to Coupang, Compagnie Financière Richemont canceled its deal to sell a majority stake in Yoox Net-a-porter to Farfetch and Alabbar.

Richemont has already written down the $300 million in convertible senior notes issued by Farfetch Limited to Richemont in November 2020 after the deal was first announced.

Other than the deal to sell YNAP and to partner with Farfetch on back-office tech operations, Richemont said it had no financial obligations toward Farfetch.

Late last year, when the extent of Farfetch’s financial woes emerged, Richemont sought to reassure its own investors and said it did not envisage “lending or investing” into the troubled platform.

Coupang, meanwhile, has not gone public with its plans for the companies in the Farfetch portfolio, which include the retailer Browns in London; New Guards Group; Stadium Goods, and a $200 million stake in Neiman Marcus.

As reported earlier this month, the Italian private equity firm Style Capital is eyeing New Guards Group, which is home to 10 international brands, including Marcelo Burlon County of Milan, Palm Angels, Heron Preston, Alanui and There Was One. NGG is also the licensee of Off-White and is the European partner of Reebok.

Roberta Benaglia, founder and CEO of Style Capital, was cautious about the outcome of talks to acquire the company. “It’s complicated, there are several major parties involved,” she said.

Tesla’s decision was “informed by New York’s reliable power supply, strong talent pipeline and availability of usable space for the project,” according to Hochul’s office.

Dojo, which was first announced at Tesla’s “AI Day” event in 2021, is a supercomputer meant to help advance the company’s still-unrealized goal of building a self-driving car. Tesla plans to use the supercomputer to process reams of video data that come off of its electric vehicles in order to train the AI that now powers its most advanced driver assistance software, which it calls Full Self-Driving Beta. Musk said last year that Tesla plans to spend “well over $1 billion” on Dojo.

Bringing the Dojo project to Buffalo is the latest shift in Tesla’s priorities for the location, which has turned into something of a boondoggle for New York state. Once dubbed “Gigafactory 2,” Tesla took over the factory from SolarCity when it acquired the troubled solar panel company in 2016. The state had already committed $750 million to the plant by that point. Tesla promised to make Solar Roof tiles there, but struggled to produce the product at scale. Its partner, Panasonic, pulled out of the plant in 2020, and Tesla pivoted to employing people who labeled training data for its less-advanced Autopilot software.

Musk said last April that he believed the Dojo supercomputer project was a “long shot bet” that could “pay off in a very, very big way… in the multi-hundred-billion-dollar level.”

He reiterated the point this week on a call with analysts. “It’s not, like, a sure thing at all, It’s a high-risk, high-payoff program,” he said. “We are scaling it up, and we have plans for Dojo 1.5, Dojo 2, Dojo 3, and whatnot. So, you know, I think it’s got potential, but the kind of size enough high risk, high payoff.”

While the $500 million investment received cheers during Hochul’s press conference, Musk downplayed the figure in a social media post on X, noting the company would spend far more money on Nvidia hardware in 2024.

“The governor is correct that this is a Dojo Supercomputer, but $500M, while obviously a large sum of money, is only equivalent to a 10k H100 system from Nvidia,” Musk wrote in the post on X. “Tesla will spend more than that on Nvidia hardware this year. The table stakes for being competitive in AI are at least several billion dollars per year at this point.”

DÉCRYPTAGELe mythe du Déluge s’est répandu sur toute la planète, à différentes époques et dans différents contextes. Psychanalystes, archéologues et anthropologues ont tenté de remonter aux racines de ces récits, contant l’effacement des civilisations à la suite de leur immersion sous des flots intarissables et dont les échos ont une résonance particulière en ces temps de dérèglement climatique.

Marc Lescarbot (1570-1641), érudit, avocat et voyageur français, parti de La Rochelle en 1606, séjourna toute une année en Acadie (région à cheval entre le nord des Etats-Unis et le Canada actuels), et eut alors la surprise de découvrir que certains Amérindiens racontaient des histoires de déluge. Comment était-il possible que ces « sauvages » aient connaissance du récit biblique ?

A son retour, il publia, en 1609, une Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, dans laquelle il exposait son explication, en posant la question suivante : qu’est-ce qui empêche de croire que Noé, censé avoir vécu trois cent cinquante ans après le Déluge, n’ait lui-même pris le soin et la peine de peupler, ou plutôt repeupler, ces pays-là ?

Lescarbot suggère que le patriarche biblique serait parti du Cap-Vert pour naviguer jusqu’au Brésil… où il aurait donc eu tout loisir de narrer ses aventures diluviennes. Cette invention de Lescarbot, qui fait sourire aujourd’hui, n’est qu’une des nombreuses théories « monogénistes » qui cherchent à donner une seule et unique explication à tous les mythes diluviens du monde.

Au commencement était la Bible ?

Jusqu’à la parution des Principes de géologie du savant britannique Charles Lyell (1797-1875), en 1875, la préhistoire était largement considérée comme une période « antédiluvienne », antérieure au Déluge biblique. De nos jours, seuls de rares géologues créationnistes comme l’Américain John Baumgardner continuent de soutenir l’existence d’un cataclysme universel correspondant au récit de la Genèse. Mais, avant lui, nombreux sont ceux qui ont voulu prouver la véracité du mythe diluvien.

En retrouvant l’arche de Noé, par exemple. Une légende notée au Ve siècle raconte ainsi que le patriarche Jacques de Nisibe escalada le mont Ararat (Turquie) à sa recherche et que, parvenu tout près du sommet (à plus de 5 000 mètres d’altitude), un ange lui révéla que Dieu ne voulait pas qu’il vît l’arche, mais qu’un morceau lui en serait remis. De fait, à son réveil, le patriarche trouva près de lui une planche qu’il descendit précieusement de la montagne, et cette relique est toujours conservée dans le trésor de l’église d’Etchmiadzine, en Arménie.

Cette expédition n’était que la première d’une longue série. De nos jours encore, il ne manque pas d’aventuriers qui déclarent avoir retrouvé en divers endroits la fameuse embarcation — en réalité un coffre, selon le sens propre du mot hébreu utilisé dans la Bible, tebah.

En d’autres lieux et dans d’autres traditions, on raconte aussi que des survivants d’un antique déluge ont été sauvés grâce à d’autres objets : courge ou tambour en Asie du Sud-Est, mortier à Taïwan et Bornéo, gros coquillage en Irian Jaya (Nouvelle-Guinée), jarre en Amérique du Nord, ou encore tronc flottant, panier, etc.

Comment donc expliquer un mythe qui, en dépit des variantes, soit commun à autant de peuples autour de la planète ? Pour l’historien autrichien Moriz Winternitz (1863-1937), la plupart des mythes diluviens seraient des déformations de l’enseignement chrétien – il n’exclut pas pour autant la possibilité que quelques récits autochtones anciens aient pu être modifiés sous l’influence des missionnaires.

Les travaux plus contemporains de la mythologue allemande Eva Gerhards ont, en partie, confirmé cette hypothèse pour l’Amérique : les missionnaires ont eux-mêmes cherché à élaborer des versions syncrétiques entre traditions amérindiennes et texte biblique. Pour ce faire, l’histoire de la tour de Babel et le mythe de Jonas ont été privilégiés en Amérique du Nord, tandis que le Déluge fut préféré au sud.

Mais cela n’explique pas tout, loin de là, et l’on ne peut imputer tous les mythes diluviaux à l’influence des missionnaires. C’est ce que montre, par exemple, le mythe tupi d’un déluge recueilli par le moine cordelier André Thévet (1516-1590) durant son voyage au Brésil en 1555-1556. Ce récit est vraiment très éloigné de celui de la Genèse.

Qu’on en juge : de retour d’une bataille, un féroce guerrier, ayant tué un ennemi, défie son propre frère en jetant contre sa porte le bras coupé de sa victime. Au même instant, leur village est transporté au ciel, tandis qu’eux-mêmes restent sur terre.

Le frère défié, stupéfait, frappe si rudement le sol de son talon qu’il en jaillit une eau sombre qui recouvre bientôt la terre, noyant toute l’humanité, à l’exception des deux héros et de leurs épouses ; ceux-ci grimpent au faîte de deux arbres dressés au sommet d’une montagne, et les couples seront les ancêtres de deux populations ennemies, chacune pratiquant le cannibalisme aux dépens de l’autre. Difficile de croire qu’un tel récit aurait été inspiré par le zèle évangélisateur des missionnaires !

Vraie catastrophe ou activité de l’inconscient ?

Le philologue allemand Adalbert Kuhn (1812-1881) pensait, pour sa part, que toute la mythologie serait à comprendre par la crainte des forces de la nature, et le mythe du Déluge résulterait donc de la « mythisation » d’une inondation réelle. Le géographe Richard Andree (1835-1912), qui, en 1891, a consacré tout un livre à cette question, estimait également que tous les récits de déluges recueillis dans le monde étaient indépendants les uns des autres, mais que chacun d’eux conservait le souvenir d’une ancienne catastrophe locale.

Ainsi, nombreux sont les savants qui ont cherché à « expliquer » les mythes diluviens par des phénomènes bien réels, à l’instar de l’ouverture brutale du seuil du Bosphore il y a environ sept mille cinq cents ans ans, avec pour conséquence le déversement des eaux méditerranéennes dans la mer Noire.

D’autres chercheurs y voient le souvenir d’une submersion marine dans le golfe Persique, ou bien de la montée des eaux survenue lors du réchauffement climatique du début de l’holocène il y a quelque douze mille ans, quand il ne s’agirait pas d’une crue subite du fleuve Jaune, il y a quatre mille ans.

Il est pourtant évident que des phénomènes aussi localisés, et survenus à des dates très diverses, ne peuvent aucunement élucider l’ensemble des mythes du Déluge recueillis en abondance en Amérique du Sud. Et les variations du niveau marin ne peuvent livrer l’origine de variantes recueillies parfois très loin dans les terres.

Des motivations plus générales ont donc été recherchées, notamment du côté des lectures symboliques. En 1903, le linguiste allemand Ernst Böklen (1863-1935) a imaginé que l’arche de Noé figurait la Lune, dont les trois phases seraient représentées par les trois étages de l’embarcation légendaire, tandis que la poix utilisée pour la calfater constituerait une évocation de l’éclipse lunaire.

En 1939, Eleanor Follansbee (1898-1981) interpréta le héros du mythe comme un dieu de la végétation, dont la castration provoque la sécheresse, alors que la pluie marque son retour à la virilité. De façon encore plus large – ou vague ? –, Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) considérait que derrière le Déluge se cacherait un « système mythico-rituel de la fête du Nouvel An », et plus généralement une « régression au chaos ».

Sur un tel sujet, les psychanalystes ne sont pas demeurés en reste et rivalisent toujours d’imagination. Pour Géza Roheim (1891-1953), l’image du Déluge naît des rêves masculins, quand la pression de l’urine ou l’érection matinale suggèrent des images de liquide jaillissant. Pour une jungienne comme Eleanor Bertine (1887-1968), les flots du Déluge seraient les périls de l’inconscient risquant d’inonder l’esprit, l’arche figurant alors la capacité de surmonter cette épreuve.

Otto Rank (1884-1939) pensait, quant à lui, que le Déluge contait de façon imagée la fertilisation de la terre par un ciel mâle, et que la création d’une nouvelle humanité après cet épisode autorisait à y reconnaître la perte des eaux à l’accouchement. Alan Dundes (1934-2005) reprit cette idée d’une projection dans la cosmogonie d’un souvenir du liquide amniotique, ce qui expliquerait, selon lui, que tant de savants masculins, par définition privés de l’expérience de la grossesse, se seraient passionnés pour l’étude de ce type de récits. Le Déluge exprimerait alors le désir inconscient de grossesse masculine, et l’expression du mythe compenserait symboliquement l’incapacité masculine à enfanter.

Compiler ce type de lectures montre que, loin d’élucider le mythe, les exégètes projettent sur lui leurs propres présupposés, sans tenir compte de la très large variété des récits. C’est, du reste, le sort des interprétations symboliques en général, qui se contredisent souvent, et demeurent irréconciliables : l’arche de Noé symbolisait le Soleil pour Hermann Usener (1834-1905), alors que c’était la Lune pour Ernst Böklen !

Les pièges de l’ethnocentrisme

On le voit, les récits diluviens ont fait l’objet d’innombrables hypothèses, qui se contredisent souvent les unes les autres, mais qui toutes considèrent comme une évidence la notion même de « déluge », sans prendre la peine de définir ce terme. C’est là commettre une première erreur, qui nous fait tomber dans les pièges de l’ethnocentrisme. Il semble a priori évident, en effet, que ce mot désigne une pluie si abondante qu’elle finit par noyer le monde ; d’où notre expression « pluie diluvienne ».

Or, il existe d’autres façons de considérer ce mythe, en notant qu’il s’agit principalement d’un récit de « double création » : les premiers humains se révèlent vite insupportables, trop ambitieux ou trop bruyants, ils sont imparfaits, ils se prennent pour des dieux, ou encore ils violent un tabou ou commettent des fautes irréparables.

Il est alors décidé de les détruire, afin de procéder à une nouvelle création, meilleure que la précédente. Cette destruction est obtenue par le déclenchement d’un cataclysme universel qui, bien sûr, peut être une « pluie diluvienne », mais il peut également s’agir d’un déluge de feu, qu’on appelle ekpyrosis (« embrasement », en grec ancien).

Quant à l’inondation générale, elle peut résulter de divers processus, dont la pluie n’est qu’un exemple : selon les mythes, ce peut être un raz de marée, de l’eau sortant d’une plante coupée ou arrachée, un récipient brisé ou renversé et d’où sort un flot destructeur, les larmes inextinguibles d’un être mythique, le souffle d’une baleine… ou bien encore quelqu’un soulève une pierre qui faisait office de bonde, ou le monde se retourne soudainement, ce qui fait que l’eau des océans se répand partout.

Pour une étude générale des mythes du Déluge, aucune de ces variantes n’est à privilégier a priori au détriment des autres ; le type impliquant une pluie n’est donc pas un modèle général, et encore moins le modèle d’où proviendraient tous les récits diluviens.

La seconde erreur, fréquemment commise, est de limiter la documentation à un trop petit nombre de documents. Ainsi, après avoir réuni, en 1919, une belle collection de mythes diluviens, le grand folkloriste James Frazer (1854-1941) a déclaré : « Alors que la légende d’un déluge universel est largement répandue en de nombreuses régions du globe, on peine à en trouver trace en Afrique. En fait, on peut douter qu’une seule tradition d’un grand déluge puisse avoir été notée sur ce vaste continent. » Or, les inventaires actuels, plus complets, permettent d’affirmer que ce mythe est, au contraire, bien présent en Afrique, où l’on en connaît aujourd’hui cinquante-sept occurrences. Cet exemple montre qu’il est toujours risqué de se livrer à de grandes interprétations générales en partant d’une documentation par trop incomplète.

Certes, il en est du Déluge comme des autres mythes : nos inventaires ne seront jamais exhaustifs, du simple fait que, par exemple, d’innombrables peuples ont disparu du globe sans que leurs mythes soient jamais recueillis. De plus, il est très difficile et très long d’élaborer des bases de données importantes, mais c’est un préalable nécessaire aux analyses, puisque seule une documentation suffisamment abondante permet de mettre en évidence la variabilité de certains éléments du récit de base.

Ainsi, le détail selon lequel l’arche serait toujours visible en haut d’une montagne fait partie d’un ensemble bien plus vaste de narrations qui procèdent par différents « effets de vérité ». Les Pawnees des Grandes Plaines nord-américaines montrent les ossements des victimes de la catastrophe ; au Mexique, ce sont les empreintes des survivants qui sont marquées dans des pierres amollies par les eaux ; en Chine, des peintures rupestres sont supposées nous léguer les connaissances des humains antérieures au Déluge en témoignant de son historicité ; enfin, en Indonésie, les Muyu montrent aux passants les restes du grand barrage dressé en vain pour tenter d’arrêter les eaux.

On reconnaît là une façon extrêmement répandue d’ancrer un récit dans un détail du paysage, ce dernier étant pris comme « témoin » du mythe, alors même que le récit légendaire lui donne une signification.

Expect more companies to encourage trips to familiar places in the ‘shoulder months’

Will it be Sardinia or Iceland this August?

Cold, dark winter days in January often spur northern Europeans to book their summer holidays in advance. This year, tourism will return to pre-pandemic levels, says the UN World Tourism Organization. But even as numbers climb, tour operators are facing the longer-term threat of climate-related weather events.

Intense heatwaves in southern Europe that regularly top 40C and wildfires such as those that raged in Greece last year are starting to affect holiday-maker plans, says the European Travel Commission. Tour operators and hotel owners will be aware of stranded asset risk if tourists shun popular destinations in the southern Mediterranean. Operator valuations remain depressed compared with pre-pandemic levels.

Cooler destinations such as Iceland and Denmark appeared among the UN’s top 10 best-performing European destinations in 2023 by the percentage change in international tourist arrivals versus 2019.

About 14 per cent of European travellers now cite extreme weather events as their main concern when considering travel plans, according to the ETC. While still relatively modest, that is up from 7 per cent during a previous study in May.

Lex has long argued that investors, including those in the tourism sector, are underpricing climate risks. Travel companies are somewhat belatedly starting to acknowledge the threat.

Tour operator Tui has begun to offer holidays in some southern Mediterranean destinations such as Turkey’s Antalya year-round. The hope is that travellers who are put off by extreme temperatures in peak summer months can be persuaded to holiday in spring and autumn instead. Rival Jet2 ordered a study into the physical risks to its business model posed by climate change.

Tui owns 38 per cent of its hotels, even if the majority are now operated under management contracts. This reduces its flexibility to adjust to swings in consumer trends. Wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes cost it €25mn during the peak summer season. But the impact was limited by tourists proving willing to return quickly.

Consumer demand is not yet sufficient to warrant significant increases in capacity in cooler destinations such as the Nordics. Significantly more beds would be required. Compare tourism beds in Spain, at nearly 2mn in 2021, with Finland at under 139,000. Holidaying in Nordic countries is not cheap, either.

Southern Med destinations including Spain, Greece and Turkey remain top summer destinations. Expect more travel companies to encourage trips to familiar places in the so-called shoulder months in spring and autumn.

Extending the travel season is not simple. Travel groups must negotiate with local authorities to ensure other facilities remain open. School holidays pose a problem. But another few summers of extreme heat could quickly change consumers’ travel plans.

Sotheby’s trial provides a peek behind the curtain of private art sales

Testimony in New York case pitting wealthy oligarch against the famed auction house has shed new light on high-end transactions

Testimony in a legal battle between a Russian billionaire and Sotheby’s, one of the world’s most prestigious auction houses, has pulled back the curtain on the opaque world of how the world’s most expensive art is sold to its most discreet buyers.

The case — in which oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev has accused Sotheby’s of helping Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier overcharge him by approximately $1bn on numerous purchases over a decade — has captivated the art world, giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse of private deals totalling tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. (Sotheby’s has denied any wrongdoing. Bouvier has not been named as a defendant in the lawsuit, and various other cases against him over his work for Rybolovlev have either been dismissed or settled.)

Lawyers for Rybolovlev argued that “transparency and accountability” are at the heart of the case. But Sotheby’s maintains that confidentiality and discretion are crucial to the world of high-end art sales to protect clients’ identities, prevent theft and stop any potential poaching by other auction houses.

While Sotheby’s is known for its prestigious public art auctions, a significant part of its business is brokering private deals directly between buyers and sellers. Those private sales are a particularly shrouded corner of the art market, where work changes hands through dealers such as Sotheby’s and identities are concealed on both sides of the purchase.

Often an owner will have no idea to whom they are selling, and the buyer little clue from where the art is coming. Sometimes works are never even displayed — instead living in storage, passing from hand to hand.

Over multiple days of testimony, Samuel Valette — the global head of private sales at Sotheby’s who sold many of the works to Bouvier, the Swiss dealer who worked for years with Rybolovlev — detailed the process by which works, including Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi”, were procured for Bouvier, his top client at the time.

“My job was to make money for Sotheby’s,” Valette told the jury. He was Sotheby’s top salesperson for private transactions worldwide for the past three years, the auction house said. Sotheby’s takes a commission on the value of private sales, usually between 3 per cent and 9 per cent of the sale price of the art, though Sotheby’s said that can vary depending on the piece. Between 2018 and 2022, 86 per cent of all private sales involved art valued at more than $1mn, according to a Sotheby’s report.

For private sales Sotheby’s dealers search for works their clients are seeking, working internally to find willing sellers and negotiate a price. Emails showed Valette asking a colleague to have her client name a price for a René Magritte painting that Bouvier wanted. While the painting had initially been estimated by Sotheby’s to be worth less than $10mn based on previous auction data, the client was willing to part with it for $25mn. Bouvier purchased it from Sotheby’s for $24mn, and sold it to Rybolovlev shortly afterwards for $43.5mn.

Rybolovlev was the subject of many internal emails at Sotheby’s, which was keen to court him as a potential client. He featured on a spreadsheet circulated internally before large sales, listing clients alongside the highest figures they had ever paid for a work at auction. A number of high-profile Russian billionaires, including Roman Abramovich and Andrey Melnichenko, were active in the fine art market at the time, Valette said.

Rybolovlev made his fortune in fertiliser after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and is the owner of the Monaco football team. Among his other big-ticket purchases was a Palm Beach mansion he bought from Donald Trump in 2008 (who was attending his own court case next door) for a record $95mn, more than twice what Trump paid for it four years earlier.

Valette detailed the process by which the auction house representatives built relationships with ultra high-net-worth clients to encourage them to sell with Sotheby’s: “We are in the business of being chosen. By sellers and by buyers.”

Internal discussions among Sotheby’s specialists, including Valette, on current leads included “someone who will inherit a Modigliani”. While Sotheby’s did not specify if the client was in mourning, it indicated “it is not appropriate to visit at the moment”. It was concluded they would be invited to events in the south of France to build the relationship.

The highest-profile work at issue in the trial is da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi”, whose sale at Sotheby’s in 2013 was code-named “Jack”. Valette worked with Bouvier and the sellers, who had purchased the painting at auction for about $10,000 and restored it. To make the deal, he travelled with one of the owners to Paris to meet a representative for Bouvier, who started negotiations with what he described as a “brutally low” offer of about $47mn. The sellers were hoping for at least $100mn.

Valette described the final dinner of the visit as “painful” and “chaotic” as they raced to make a deal. Late that night, a final purchase price of $68mn, plus a painting by Picasso valued at $12mn, was negotiated in exchange for the “Salvator Mundi”. Bouvier would sell the painting to Rybolovlev shortly afterwards for $127.5mn.

Four years later, Rybolovlev resold the work at auction, this time at Christie’s, for a record-shattering $450mn.

Emails show how as art valuations soared, margins of $5mn to $10mn on these “trophy” artworks felt like rounding errors. Over email in 2015, Valette expressed frustration when a colleague at Sotheby’s pushed back on his request for a higher valuation for the da Vinci painting two years after the original sale to Bouvier was agreed. The colleague said €95mn was “the most [he] could live with” but Valette told the court he thought “95 was too precise” and “an awkward number”, and pushed for €100mn, or about $110mn.

Valette said he wanted a big, round number. “In this world, if you’re at €95mn, you’re at €100mn, ” he said.

The valuation discussion was standard for the auction house, he said. “If you put 10 specialists in a room, you’d probably get 10 different opinions about what something was worth.”