"My philosophy in my business, and I instill this into my team, is everything we do has got to be professional, enjoyable, and profitable, and with clients I do the same. If it doesn't tick all three boxes, I'm not doing it," said Philip Hoffman, owner of a billion-dollar fine art investment fund, to an audience at the London Business School.
Founder and CEO of The Fine Art Group, Hoffman tells fascinating, personally detailed anecdotes of his rise from a $16,000-a-year accountant at KPMG to the turnaround artist at shipping giant Maersk to becoming the finance director at Christie's Europe before launching his global art fund, which has more than tripled in available capital since the date of this talk. Although the soundtrack on the video is a bit raspy, probably due to a microphone set too hot, the video is well worth watching.
As relevant today as it was when it was originally recorded, Hoffman tells the story in the last segment of how his fund mostly invests in art in the $1-20 million per picture category with some as high as $100 million. He also has a department identifying newly emerging artists in the $5-50,000 per picture category, an agile move learned from one of his first investors.
Hoffman is a seasoned raconteur and a sought-after commentator on movements in the art world and has been quoted in thousands of news articles. Watch the video to see Hoffman tell charming stories of his international business adventures.