It is an unexpected conversion. After investing in honey, almonds and ice cream made in France, Arnaud Montebourg launched himself into the art market, tricolor of course. The former Minister of the Economy and Productive Recovery under François Hollande now chairs the auction house Pierre Bergé & Associés, founded in 2002 by businessman Pierre Bergé (1930-2017).
In receivership since December 2022, the company was bought in February for an amount of 70,000 euros from the commercial court by the auctioneer Alexandre Landre, whose activity, specializing since 2019 in furniture objects of art and sales of spirits, is articulated between Beaune, Semur-en-Auxois (Côte-d’Or), Nancy and Paris. The new entity, of which Arnaud Montebourg holds 20%, through his company Les Equipes du made in France, and with which the auctioneer Richard Bédot is associated, will keep its premises on avenue Kléber, in the Parisian Golden Triangle. It will maintain the XX departmentse century, books and Haute Epoque, for which it has a large file.
Since his ousting from the government in 2014, and a failed attempt to come back to politics three years later in the left-wing citizens’ primary, the former PS slinger has embarked on entrepreneurship, following a passage through the benches of the European Institute of Business Administration (Insead). The apprentice businessman first experienced a severe setback by investing, in 2015, in the Breton start-up New Wind, quickly placed in compulsory liquidation, before engaging in fair agribusiness. Since 2018, he has been marketing Bleu Blanc Ruche honeys, and has launched a school of advanced studies in beekeeping in Dijon.
Legal troubles
From the swarms of bees to the wasps’ nest of the art market, the shift is by no means obvious, even for a juggler accustomed to putting himself on stage to advance his ideas or promote his products. Especially since the company Pierre Bergé & Associés has accumulated setbacks since the death of its founder in 2017. According to information published in December 2022 by the monthly Capital, the sales company first had to reimburse the banks for an overdraft of three million euros for which Pierre Bergé had acted as guarantor, which weakened the cash flow just before the Covid-19, which put the activity on hold. the stop. Subsequently, legal troubles jeopardized the takeover.
The revelations, in June 2020, concerning a vast traffic in antiquities looted in Egypt and the Middle East, splashed the auction house. Its archeology expert, Christophe Kunicki, is suspected of having sold, between 2007 and 2017, hundreds of objects of dubious origin, notably from countries at war such as Yemen. The investigation carried out by the Central Office for the Fight once morest Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC) brought to light a singular lack of vigilance on the part of the management of Bergé & Associés and a total absence of control of the activities of its expert. .
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