ArtInfo‘s Jean Bond Rafferty explains the final pieces of the Christie’s management puzzle as the firm’s French operations also see a shift in personnel. Citing a story in Liberation, we are told Ricqlès and Curiel were at odds:

The man who bagged “the sale of the century” for Christie’s, vice-president François de Ricqlès, has been named the new president of Christie’s France. François Curiel, president of Christie’s Europe since 1999 and Christie’s France since 2000, is going to Hong Kong as the new president of Christie’s Asia to develop the booming Far Eastern market. British print expert Jonathan Rendell, Christie’s deputy U.S. chairman, who had a hand in the YSL sale’s success while working with Ricqlès and the French team, will move to Paris to reinforce the auction house’s French development and international strategy. […]

Ricqlès, 51, has shown a remarkable facility in attracting boldface-name collections, first with his eponymous auction house at the Salle Drouot, where the sale of the Hubert de Goldet collection in 2001 doubled its estimate to €13.7 million, setting a then world record for tribal art at auction. Then, after selling his company to Christie’s, he directed such successful sales as those of Paris art dealer Patrice Trigano (€4.8 million); actor Claude Berri’s trove of photography, when a Man Ray rayogram made a record €348,000; and the former collections of the Duc de Talleyrand (€7.1 million) and the Marquis and Marquise de Ravenel (€6.8 million). “It seems natural. It’s been my métier for 30 years, since I was 21,” de Ricqlès told ARTINFO. “I sold my company to Christie’s and then joined them in 2002,” when a French law permitting foreign companies to hold sales in France was passed, he explains. […]

Curiel is shouldering an even greater challenge. “After Christie’s New York, which I helped build in 1976 with Christopher Burge and Stephen Lash, then Paris in 2000 for nine years, I’m off to Hong Kong to try and develop the Asian market, our biggest market at the moment,” he says. Asia already provides 12 percent of revenues for the auction house; after New York and London, Hong Kong is its third largest salesroom. The take in Hong Kong is more than double Christie’s Parisian sales in a normal year. “More important is that the region provides buyers for our sales worldwide,” Curiel points out. “In Impressionist and modern art, contemporary art, jewelry, Old Masters, and 20th-century decorative arts, our biggest buyers often come from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia.” […] Curiel has a team of a hundred in Hong Kong and, he says, “the means to develop the market. I don’t have the recipe yet,” he admits, “but I hope to grow the business in the same way we’ve done in America and Paris.”

Major Management Changes at Christie’s (ArtInfo)