Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Salander Protocol

Bloomberg's Philip Boroff (who owns the Salander bankruptcy beat) reports that the gallery’s chief restructuting officer has proposed “a process to enable owners of the 4,000 artworks held at the New York gallery and its warehouses to retrieve their property. Under the so-called protocol, a gallery employee will advertise an inventory of the artworks and interested parties can submit an application to recover any pieces to a review committee.” A hearing on the plan is scheduled for Feb. 14.

As Boroff notes, it's unclear how much would actually be resolved by such a procedure:

"Proceedings may be contentious, lawyers said, with First Republic [which is owed tens of millions of dollars by the gallery and by Salander individually] casting a long shadow. Its loans are secured by a lien [against] all 'property of every kind and nature' of the gallery, according to a Jan. 3 court filing."