Christie's (auction house)

History

2024: Customer data breach after cyber attack

Christie's auction house in late May 2024 officially confirmed the leakage of its customers' data as a result of a cyber attack that occurred at the beginning of the month. Hacker group RansomHub claimed responsibility for the incident, claiming the theft of personal information including the names, nationalities and dates of birth of customers.

The hacker group published a sample of the stolen data on a shadow Internet forum, and also set a countdown timer indicating the planned publication of the full data archive in early June 2024.

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A Christie's spokesman confirmed that "unauthorised entry to the auction house's network was established and a limited amount of personal data of some customers was indeed stolen." He also noted that "there is no evidence that financial or transactional records have been compromised."

The cyberattack forced the auction house to temporarily shut down its site days before the start of New York's crucial 20th and 21st century auctions in May. However, Christie's was able to quickly place auction catalogs on another resource and provide registered collectors with a link for online bidding. Christie's main site remained unavailable for about 10 days.

Brett Callow, cybersecurity specialist at Emsisoft, said that "the likelihood of RansomHub participating in the incident is quite high," although the amount of stolen data remains in question. The main concern is the possibility of publishing the location of expensive works of art.

According to Bloomberg, the auction house belongs to the family of billionaire Pinot. In 2023, it reported record sales of about $6.2 billion.^[1]

2021:50% sales growth

Sales of Christie's auction house in 2021 reached $7.1 billion by 2021, half as much as in 2020. About $150 million was received from the sale of non-replaceable tokens NFT (), a new category for 2021, the auction house also sold the most expensive lot of the year - the painting "The Woman Sitting at the Window" ("Maria Teresa") by Pablo Picasso, which was sold for $103.4 million (dollars with commission) New York in May 2021.

Arts Department 20/21 chairman Alex Rotter proudly declared Christie's "the leading auction house for the NFT," as after selling the digital image "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" by the Beeple artist in March for $69.3 million, the company sold more than 100 NFTs totaling $150 million. The average age of buyers in this area is 42 years (from the point of view of art collectors - these are just children), and 75% of NFT buyers were newcomers to Christie's.

Christie's auction house sales rise by half

Across categories overall, 35% of buyers in 2021 were new to the business and 32% were millennials - an influx of first-time buyers that Christie's CEO Guillaume Cerutti said is a major driver of the current revival in auction sales of high-end products.

Despite the sale of 87% of the lots put up by Christie's at auction in 2021, an increasing number of sellers are choosing a safe and confidential sale privately, especially given the turbulent situation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Christie's total private sales reached $1.7 billion and surpassed the previous record set in 2020. Sales include four works at a price of more than $50 million apiece.

Sales of luxury goods (jewelry, watches, bags and wine) at Christie's auction house in 2021 amounted to $980 million, which is 153% more than in 2020. The most important and active market for Christie's remains the United States. Auction sales in the Americas (both in real time and online) amounted to $2.6 billion, which is 92% more than in 2020, and 35% of sales in general fell on American buyers. The second most important region is EMEA, where total and online auctions amounted to $1.7 billion, which is 63% more than in 2020.^[2]

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