TheChek News Flow

Record-breaking estate sales mask the real, and sometimes declining, value of art

The supply of art for auction has long relied on what are known as the three Ds: debt, divorce and death. In recent years, the latter has dominated as a certain breed of collector — notably the self-made millionaires who bought art during the US golden age of the 1950s and 60s — reached the end. 

“What is new is the scale, in volume and value,” says Caroline Sayan, president and CEO of the art advisers Cadell North America. Previously at Christie’s for 25 years, she oversaw estate sales including the $835mn collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller in 2018, the year after the industrialist heir died. “Think of it as like planes landing. Before this time, there were smaller jets, individual planes, and it was easy to manoeuvre. Then, all of a sudden, these jumbo jets started coming in,” she says.

Statistics from the analysis firm ArtTactic show that in 2018, single-owner collections — predominantly estates — accounted for $2.1bn (17 per cent) of auction totals, up from $820mn (7 per cent) in 2017. Since then, totals and percentages have surpassed this, with single-owner collections averaging $2.6bn in value and accounting for 23 per cent of auction sales in 2021-2025.

The impact on the market and its all-important mood is notable. In 2022, the year of the record-breaking $1.6bn sale of works from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, art sales as a whole, including from the private dealer sector, were at their highest level for eight years, according to the Art Basel & UBS Art Market report. Last year’s bounce into the black was helped by the $527mn sale of art from the cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder. 

When such collections come to market, buyers tend to pay a premium for the pull of the previous owner — and the auction houses have proved adept at the storytelling that boosts this. The halo effect of provenance can be seen on a broader and more pronounced scale at celebrity sales, such as the 2023 auction of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. It included items such as a silver moustache comb from Tiffany, estimated between £400 and £600, which sold for £152,400. At the other end of the scale, at the Rockefeller auction, a late Monet water lily painting, estimated at $50mn, sold for $85mn.

Such inbuilt inflation, and the tendency for such auctions to sell out, arguably masks the real, and sometimes declining, value of art. Sayan says that, for those in the know, “one major sale by Claude Monet, doesn’t lift all his work; Monet isn’t a stock.” But, she says, “it can give confidence about the overall market, whether that is right or wrong.” 

The latest collection to boost the block comes courtesy of the late Belgian couple, Roger and Josette Vanthournout, whose 200-plus works will be offered at Christie’s in London in March, valued at about £40mn. Their names may not be as familiar as Rockefeller or Allen but, says Olivier Camu, Christie’s deputy chairman of impressionist and modern art, “they were very serious collectors and very well known in the art market. When they approached a gallery stand at, say, Art Basel, art dealers paid attention.” 

Works that the Vanthournouts once owned have already made a splash. Part of their collection came to auction at Sotheby’s, after Roger Vanthournout died in 2005. This included Francis Bacon’s ominous and fleshy “Version No. 2 of lying figure with hypodermic syringe” (1968), which sold for $15mn, then a record price for the artist. Josette Vanthournout kept the bulk of the collection, to live with in their Flanders home, which Camu describes as a “treasure trove”. She died last year and now their family is “selling it to the world,” Camu says. 

Highlights include René Magritte’s supersized leaf in a lonely mountainscape, “La plaine de l’air” (1940), estimated at £3.5mn-£5.5mn, and Max Ernst’s similarly barren “Seestück” (1921), estimated at £1.5mn-£2.5mn. About a third of the collection is in such surrealist and Dada works, Camu says, though there is also a cubist double portrait of Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso (“Nu debout et femmes assises”, 1939, £3mn-£5mn) and plenty of modern British art, including sculptures by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Lynn Chadwick.

Estate sales are not without their challenges, Sayan says: “It isn’t so much that collections distort demand, but they can absorb it . . . They take up the calendar slots, marketing and so on.” Hence, estate sales with hundreds of items are rarely all live auctions — the Vanthournout sale will have about half of its works offered online for a couple of weeks, as well as in dedicated evening and day sales (March 5-6). 

The overflow of lower and mid-value collections can benefit auction centres outside of dominant New York — the Vanthournout sale is a boost for London — as well as the regional auction houses. Next month, London’s Olympia Auctions has more than 300 items, including art books, which belonged to the cultural critic and author John Russell Taylor, who died last year. The live auction has a combined estimate of about £200,000.

The challenges of an estate auction are exacerbated by a need for speed in what can be a slow-moving market. In the US, for example, “estate taxes are often due nine months after the date of death,” Sayan notes. Familial disagreements can add to the hastening, and estimates can be set relatively low when the aim is simply to sell. “Auctions resolve any problems of liquidity and prices are transparent, so the IRS [the US tax authority] can’t argue,” Sayan says. Estate lawyers are likely also attracted by the price gains of some of the art that was bought in the postwar period. The Vanthournouts’s £5.5mn Magritte was bought privately in the late 1960s, a time when such works “would cost less than £30,000”, Camu says. 

While there are only so many such estates, there seem to be enough to keep the market moving. The Great Wealth Transfer of trillions of dollars from the wealth creation generations has only just begun, Sayan notes. Josh Baer, an industry observer and private dealer, predicts that this year “at least four collections worth over $200mn will come to the auction market”. The recent deaths of respected collectors such as the New York banker-turned-gallerist Robert Mnuchin and the patron and philanthropist Agnes Gund are among those expected to keep the auction houses busy, while debt and divorce are not going away fast. Sayan says the specialists are primed to compete for the goods, in a still-hesitant market: “Strategic intent has moved from a game of chequers to a game of chess.”

Potential buyers dropped out of talks to buy Japanese agency’s underperforming international arm

Advertising group Dentsu’s efforts to sell its international operations are close to collapse after potential trade buyers and private equity suitors walked away from talks, in a development that is set to intensify pressure on the Japanese firm’s executives.

The FT reported last year that Dentsu was exploring the sale of its UK-based international business, which made more than $4.5bn in net revenues in 2024, as part of a strategic review.

Prospective buyers to have held discussions with Dentsu included major advertising groups and a range of private equity firms. But the last trade buyers and private equity firm Apollo dropped out of talks last year, said three people familiar with the matter, leaving only Bain Capital.

A person close to Bain said the US private equity firm was “still interested, but with significant reservations”. Apollo declined to comment and Bain did not respond to a request for comment.

However, Dentsu president Hiroshi Igarashi has informed board members that Bain was unlikely to continue with talks over a deal and that the sale process had fallen apart, according to people close to the advertising group’s top management.

Dentsu’s shares fell more than 10 per cent in Tokyo after Wednesday’s news.

Japan’s largest advertising agency is expected to tell investors at its full-year results meeting next month that its attempts to secure a sale have failed, the people added, and that the company would seek to turn around its struggling international operations on its own.

The group has already unveiled plans to restructure the international businesses, including cutting more than 3,400 jobs.

“With regards to the international business, the company is rebuilding the business foundation and re-evaluating underperforming businesses,” Dentsu said. “At the same time, the company is exploring strategic alternatives to enhance corporate value, but no decision has been made at this time.”

Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley and Nomura Securities have been advising Dentsu on the deal.

Dentsu, whose outsized control of the Japanese advertising market gives it significant influence within the country’s business and political circles, has struggled to project that dominance outside Japan.

The struggle to offload the international business follows repeated failures to turn around the operations and leaves the Japanese group confronting an increasingly dismayed investor base that includes Oasis, an often vocal activist shareholder.

A deal to sell the business would have unwound a £3.2bn transaction to acquire UK media group Aegis in 2012. Dentsu’s international operations also include London-based Tag Group, a digital marketing production company.

Two people close to Dentsu said the group feared shareholders might attempt to unseat Igarashi, who also serves as its global chief executive, by voting against his reappointment at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in March.

Potential buyers had deemed Dentsu’s international business too difficult to turn around given the downward trend in its performance, the people said.

One Dentsu shareholder said they had “little confidence” in the company’s ability to turn around the international business and that the whole group was suffering from an outdated approach to a market undergoing fundamental upheaval.

Dentsu is facing stiffer competition from the combination of IPG and Omnicom, which merged last year, and the growing dominance of Publicis.

Meanwhile, the traditional roles of advertising firms are being disrupted by the adoption of AI tools, which can carry out tasks faster, cheaper and often better than existing processes.

The deal would have meant a significant retrenchment for Tokyo-listed Dentsu, which has long held ambitions to compete with global rivals such as Publicis.

Igarashi told investors last summer he was “acutely aware that reforming the international business is an urgent issue . . . I deeply regret this situation and offer my sincere apologies on behalf of the company.”

On the spectrum

European officials and companies are increasingly concerned over Elon Musk’s possible future control over a strategically sensitive slice of the EU satellite spectrum used for mobile services such as cell phones, writes Barbara Moens.

Context: The 2GHz band in the EU, used for mobile satellite services, is currently used by American companies Viasat and EchoStar. Their licences are due to expire in May next year, opening the door to a new allocation process, which should attract interest from a wide array of players, including Musk’s Starlink platform, owned by his SpaceX group, and Chinese operators.

“This will determine who becomes the leader in space [for Europe],” said an industry official, echoing concerns by several other officials familiar with the issue.

The upcoming decision comes amid heightened debate around how Europe can mitigate and limit its dependence on American technology providers.

On top of that, a recent fine for Musk’s X social network has heightened tensions between the SpaceX owner and the European Commission. The bloc earlier this week also warned Musk to take more action about controversial images generated by its AI chatbot Grok.  

Links between EchoStar and Starlink have recently raised alarm bells in the EU. Last fall, SpaceX bought wireless spectrum licences from EchoStar to bolster its Starlink network in the US. 

Andrius Kubilius, the European commissioner for defence and space, told the FT that after the current licences expired, “we should not miss an opportunity to manage 2GHz allocations wisely”.

Kubilius added that the allocation was “a strategic enabler for space governmental communications, in particular for direct-to-device services”.

A commission spokesperson stressed renewal of the licences is not automatic.

“The aim is to strike a balance between ensuring a certain degree of continuity of deployed services and the future-proof use of the band for innovative satellite infrastructure and services such as secure communications, Direct-to-Device for broadband and Internet of Things use and the development of a competitive single market,” they said.

Starlink did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China reported a $1.19 trillion surplus in 2025, with exports growing 5.5%

When President Trump returned to the White House last year, economists predicted new tariffs would stifle China’s massive export machine.

Instead, China’s trade surplus, the difference between its exports and imports, reached a record in 2025 at $1.19 trillion. Exports jumped 5.5% last year from 2024 in dollar-denominated terms, compared with 5.9% growth the prior year, China’s customs agency reported Wednesday.

Shipments to the U.S. fell, but Chinese manufacturers found new customers in the rest of the world. The global economy, powered by AI spending, kept chugging along, keeping external demand strong. And another year of producer-price deflation made Chinese goods attractive to overseas buyers.

The result: strong exports helped power China’s economy to expectation defying growth last year, even as the property market and consumer sentiment in the country remained in the doldrums.

Exports to the U.S. dropped 20% in 2025. Meanwhile, exports to a bloc of Southeast Asian countries jumped 13%, those to the European Union rose 8.4%, those to Latin America increased 7.4% and those to Africa surged 26%.

Overall exports for the month of December grew 6.6% year over year, up from 5.9% in November, while imports rose 5.7%.

As some U.S. buyers have adjusted sourcing to sidestep higher tariffs on made-in-China goods, supply chains that have shifted from China to places such as Vietnam or Mexico often still rely on Chinese components or equipment, keeping the country’s formidable manufacturing ecosystem busy.

China’s global trade imbalance has increasingly become a geopolitical liability. Some places, such as the European Union, worry that a flood of cheap Chinese goods could hurt local industries.

The International Monetary Fund has warned that China, the world’s second-largest economy, is too big to rely on exports for growth.

At the beginning of the year, some wondered if Trump’s tariffs might push Chinese leaders to restructure the economy to lean more on consumer spending rather than exports, something long called for by many Western economists and some Chinese policy advisers.

But the surprising resilience of Chinese exports took off some of the short-term pressure for Beijing to increase consumption. A program offering subsidies to buy household appliances and electric vehicles helped perk up spending earlier last year, but retail-sales momentum has since waned.

Analysts have described China’s economy as K-shaped or two-track. Exports and manufacturing are driving economic growth, while the real-estate sector and household demand are lagging.

Some economists believe it could be difficult for China to reprise such strong export growth in 2026. The chaotic on-again-off-again U.S. tariffs last year sparked frontloading of orders that accounted for some of China’s export rush.

Still, many analysts don’t expect China’s export prowess to weaken anytime soon. Global demand should remain resilient and Chinese manufacturers have proven their competitiveness despite tariffs. A trade truce between the U.S. and China has created tentative stability in tariff policy.

Beijing recently announced that it would phase out export tax rebates for solar products and batteries, which have experienced significant price declines because of oversupply.

The appeal of the nation's longest stretch of luxury has steadily rebounded since the end of the pandemic.

Madison Avenue‘s vacancy rate has dropped down to 5.6 percent, nearing historically low pre-pandemic levels for the nation’s premier luxury venue.

Six months ago, Madison’s vacancy rate along the stretch from 57th to 86th streets was just under 8 percent. In 2023, the vacancy rate stood at 10 percent, and during the pandemic, it exceeded 16 percent. Sixteen years ago, it was in the 4 to 5 percent range.

“The primary reason for businesses deciding to open here on the avenue is because they see the strength of the local residential community. You can count on the local market,” Matthew Bauer, president of the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District, told WWD.

Bauer said most residents on the Upper East Side “have the means, the interest and the proximity to be loyal customers. If you create a great product and have a lovely store, you will have customers. Brands and designers are continuing to invest on Madison Avenue.”

The BID just released its 2025 second-half report, which indicated 16 businesses opened on Madison Avenue. In all of 2025, 42 businesses opened along that stretch. The BID is focused on the streets from East 57th to East 86th streets.

Stores and other businesses expected to open on Madison Avenue this year include: Goyard, at 699 Madison; Loewe, 694-696 Madison; Marli, 785 Madison; Pasquale Bruni, 789 Madison; a Pernia pop-up, 601 Madison; Plaza Athénée Nobu Hotel & Spa, 37 East 64th Street; Ruti, 1100 Madison; Susan Alexandra, 1088 Madison, and Thom Sweeney, 761 Madison. Also, a fine dining restaurant is expected to open at Sotheby’s New York, 945 Madison.

Expansions or relocations are occurring at Akris, 772 Madison; CH Carolina Herrera, 825 Madison; Mackage, 791 Madison, and Missoni, 787 Madison.

In addition, construction is well underway at Plaza Athénée Nobu Hotel & Spa and at new mixed-use skyscraper projects at 625, 655 and 1128 Madison Avenue, which are expected to attract new residents, retailers, hospitality and offices to the district.

In the second half of last year, Sotheby’s New York opened in the landmark Breuer Building, site of the former Whitney Museum of American Art, for its new global headquarters, which also welcomes collectors and art lovers, and is considered a new Madison Avenue anchor.

Additional openings on Madison Avenue from July 1 to Dec. 31, 2025 were: Astrid & Miyu, 1134 Madison; Birley Bakery, 20 East 69 Street; Farm Rio, 1055 Madison; Favorite Daughter, 1133 Madison; Frank & Eileen, 753 Madison; Gerard Darel, 1003 Madison; Jennifer Fisher, 1159 Madison; Kujten, 831 Madison; Messika, 727 Madison; Peter Harrington, 35 East 67th Street; Rodder Gallery, 22 East 80th Street; Roxanne Assoulin, 1069 Madison; Tuckernuck, 1121 Madison; Ulla Johnson, 849 Madison, and Violet Grey, 43 East 78th Street.

The former Barneys New York site on Madison and 61st remains vacant. It’s believed to be owned by a group that includes Ashkenazy Acquisition, and could be redeveloped into condos and offices with retail at the base.

Ammonia might be the world’s most underappreciated chemical. Without it, crops would go unfertilized and billions of people would starve.

Humans started making ammonia in large amounts just over a century ago, and since then the process used to make it, known as Haber-Bosch, hasn’t changed much. A new startup, Ammobia, says that it has tweaked the Haber-Bosch process to lower the cost by up to 40%.

To prove the technology works on a larger scale, Ammobia has raised a $7.5 million seed round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Investors include Air Liquide’s venture arm ALIAD, Chevron Technology Ventures, Chiyoda Corporation, MOL Switch, and Shell Ventures.

If the startup succeeds, it could pave the way for ammonia to be used beyond fertilizer.

Ammonia is viewed by some as an alternative to hydrogen to decarbonize a range of industries. Countries like Japan and South Korea have developed industrial and transportation roadmaps that rely on ammonia. Hydrogen, the other leading contender, isn’t as energy dense and its transportation infrastructure isn’t as well developed as ammonia.

“The big advantage of ammonia is that it’s much easier and more cost-effective to transport and store,” Ammobia co-founder and CEO Karen Baert told TechCrunch. “That opens up a range of opportunities.”

But those opportunities won’t amount to much if ammonia production doesn’t clean up its act. The Haber-Bosch process is one of the world’s big polluters, producing nearly 2% of global greenhouse gases.

To make ammonia, plants using Haber-Bosch employ an iron catalyst to force one molecule of nitrogen to react with three molecules of hydrogen. The reaction requires high heat (500°C) and pressure (around 200 bar or 2,900 psi) to sustain, both of which tend to be supplied by burning fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels also provide some of the gas needed as a feedstock. Nitrogen is easy to obtain — the gas makes up nearly 80% of Earth’s atmosphere — but most hydrogen used in ammonia production is made by using steam to break apart methane molecules (CH4) found in natural gas.

Ammobia’s process runs at around 150°C cooler and at 10x lower pressure. As a result, plants that adopt the technology stand to produce less pollution, even if they don’t ditch fossil fuels.

The startup also says its process saves cost up front. Ammobia can use cheaper pumps and equipment because it doesn’t need to hit high temperatures and pressures.

That could give producers an edge. Because nearly every ammonia producer uses Haber-Bosch, they have typically had only two ways to reduce costs: find a cheaper source of heat or a cheaper source of hydrogen. In places like the U.S., few are cheaper than natural gas.

Ammobia isn’t seeking to change that right away. The startup emphasizes that its process works with any source of hydrogen or heat. But it does have some key differences from traditional Haber-Bosch that could encourage cleaner sources of each.

Because Ammobia’s process runs at lower pressure, it’s easier to ramp production up and down, which could allow renewable developers to take advantage of surplus electricity production to make cheap hydrogen and thus cheap ammonia.

“Our technology is very compatible with renewable energy, that leads to an additional cost reduction because you don’t need to store hydrogen or store electricity,” Baert said. “In these situations, we have the strongest cost advantage.”

The reduced temperature and pressure requirements also allow Ammobia to make its equipment smaller than a typical Haber-Bosch plant. Most ammonia facilities today generate between 1,000 and 3,000 tons per day, while Ammobia’s commercial-scale unit will produce 250 tons per day, Baert said. Customers that need more can install multiple units, she said.

Ammobia did not share details on how it tweaked Haber-Bosch to run at lower temperature and pressure, but there are a few hints out there. The company has a patent pending on a reactor system that incorporates a sorbent to remove ammonia as it is formed to free up space on the catalyst for another reaction to take place. Researchers have also been investigating non-iron catalysts, including manganese nitride, which use less energy to keep the chemical reaction going.

The startup has been operating a small unit for about a year, and the new funding will help the company build a pilot plant that contains all the features of the commercial model on a smaller scale, about 10 tons per day.

“With that modular approach, we can build projects faster, and we can start at a medium scale,” Baert said. “We see that a lot of customers are looking for that type of solution, and there’s no solution out there today.”

A favorite trade of 2020 and 2021—buying into a startup shortly before the company is expected to go public, often through the sale of notes convertible into equity—is bubbling again as more startups inch toward public listings. These convertible notes can act as a strong signal the company is intent on an IPO, well before it files a prospectus. They can also flag that large institutional investors have faith in a company, even if they’re uncertain about when it could go public.

As we reported last week, cloud provider Lambda Labs is seeking to raise $350 million ahead of an IPO expected later this year. In November, the crypto exchange Kraken said it had filed for an IPO, the day after it announced a $200 million fundraising. And Motive, the trucking dashcam company formerly known as KeepTruckin, sold $150 million in convertible notes last year, it disclosed in its recent IPO filing.

“Companies want to attract long-term investors in these pre-IPO rounds,” said Rachel Gerring, EY's Americas IPO Leader. “They can serve as a positive data point that fuels confidence when looking ahead to a future IPO.”

The money can also come in handy. Motive’s operating losses had whittled its cash to $48 million by the end of 2024, its filings show.

The rounds can also pave the way for a public listing by inviting large investors that typically hold stocks to buy into the company. Kraken, before two rounds late last year, hadn’t raised much from large outside investors, so the funding helped raise its stature with those types of firms.

These types of rounds were popular in 2021 and 2022, when deep-pocketed investors like Fidelity Management, T. Rowe, Tiger Global Management and others snapped up shares in Snowflake, Zoom, Coinbase and others on the cusp of their public listings. Buying into companies as well established as those three is, for sure, a far cry from investing in a young startup.

Instead, investors are banking on companies that are already usually making hundreds of millions in revenue and are getting close to turning a profit, if they haven’t already. Because these companies are typically about to go public, these investments offer a quick return, which in theory allows investors to recycle proceeds into another trade.

As this chart of several 2021 listings show, investors in Affirm, SentinelOne and DigitalOcean were able to at least double their money within a year of investing in the last private equity round before an IPO, according to data from the Prime Unicorn Index, which tracks private startups with a valuation of more than $1 billion. Those gains were often even higher if investors hung onto those shares, we wrote in early 2022, when the stock market was still not far from its pandemic-era peak.

There is, of course, the danger that a stock drops after the IPO, before companies have a chance to sell. But this is where the convertible notes come in. Buying via convertible notes gives investors a discount on stock it converts to. Lambda’s offering, for instance, would allow investors to convert their notes at a 20% discount to the IPO price and would give investors priority to invest in the IPO. What’s more if an IPO doesn’t happen, the investors may earn interest or additional equity.

Motive says investors in its convertible round, which include Greenoaks, IVP and Kleiner Perkins, will receive 1.8 worth of shares for every convertible security during an IPO and a 18% annual interest a year after the note issuance if the company doesn’t go public.

For companies, these securities are good ways to raise extra cash before the IPO but they come with risks: if the startup doesn’t list, it is saddled with debt and may need to come up with the cash to repay the investor. And if the company offers investors too steep a discount to the IPO price, existing investors—including employees—can be diluted, or see the value of their shares decline.

When tech stocks crashed in late 2022, annihilating demand for IPOs and sinking late-stage valuations, the trade soured. That year, cybersecurity security startup Arctic Wolf raised $300 million in convertible debt from Blue Owl Capital’s Owl Rock and others, as we first reported. The company’s CEO, Nick Schneider, had said he expected the company would go public by year-end. That didn’t happen, and it continued to pay interest—though at a pretty low rate of 3% annually, according to Owl Rock’s securities filings. —Cory Weinberg contributed to this report.