Katya Kazakina writes on Bloomberg about art funds. At the top of the market one firm tracked 50 art funds. That number has now shrunk to 20. Massimiliano Subba is opening a new one:
He quit Commerzbank in 2007 to pursue such a vehicle, and started Anthea Art Investments AG in Zug, Switzerland, with art adviser Nicolai Frahm. […] After rescheduling plans to start the fund in 2008, Subba is poised to open the Anthea I Contemporary Art Investment Fund to investors in May, seeking to raise 80 million euros ($110.1 million). […] Subba, who was raised in Italy and now lives in Zurich, said his experience in structured investments should help Anthea I avoid the often sharply uneven results of art funds.
Anthea I will be a closed-end fund, targeting high-net- worth individuals and large organizations such as pension funds and insurance companies. Investors will be required to put in at least 250,000 euros. The fund will invest about 20 million euros a year during the first four years, and use the remaining four years to sell its assets gradually, distributing the proceeds from the sales to the investors. Anthea I will target a compound annual return of between 10 and 15 percent. It will initially charge 2 percent of assets as an annual management fee and 10 percent of investment gains, later rising to 20 percent for new investors. […]
Anthea I will invest 25 percent in iconic works by major artists such as Andy Warhol; 45 percent in blue-chip pieces by established artists with a potential to grow, such as Cindy Sherman; 10 percent in art from new economies such as China (Ai Weiwei) and India (Subodh Gupta); 2 percent in work by new artists; and 18 percent in arbitrage opportunities. The fund will acquire and sell works of art privately and at auction.
Banker Waits Out Global Crisis, Auction Slump to Test Art Fund (Bloomberg)
