Middle East market is a gem for Sotheby’s

As Sotheby’s launches its first office and gallery space in the UAE, David Bennett, its worldwide chairman of international jewellery, reveals why the region housed the biggest jewellery collectors globally between the 1970s and 1990s.

David Bennett, the worldwide chairman of international jewellery at Sotheby’s, says the region was home to the biggest collectors worldwide for a time. Anna Nielsen for The National

About four decades ago, when economic stagnation was setting in across the West, the Middle East began its financial ascent, fuelled by the discovery of oil. Many in the region set about spending their new-found wealth and, according to David Bennett, the worldwide chairman of international jewellery at Sotheby’s – which opened its first UAE gallery and office space at the Dubai International Financial Centre on Monday – the region was home to the biggest collectors worldwide for a time. And they are still big spenders. Sotheby’s noted a 46 per cent increase in spending from its Middle East clients on jewellery from 2015 to 2016. The launch of Sotheby’s Dubai follows significant year-on-year growth in the number of Middle East clients generally, with a 30 per cent increase in buyers from the region over the past five years. Jewellery, contemporary art, impressionist and modern and Old Master paintings have driven the growth.

You are based in Geneva but this is your second visit to Dubai in as many months. What brings you here?

I am here to see clients and people who contacted us. What I am finding increasingly in the region, stretching from Saudi Arabia through the Emirates, is that we are being asked more and more often to look at collections or to give advice to people who are thinking of selling. And it is interesting because my first experiences in the region, let’s say 40 years ago when I started, were principally the new buyers. Between about 1972-73, and the middle of the ‘90s, this region was by far the most important in the world in terms of buying jewellery. Of course, Saudi Arabia was responsible for a large part of it as well. Everywhere else was in recession because of the oil price.

Are those contacting you the same people who started building their collections in the ‘70s?

Some of them are, but it is a different generation. So what’s happening is that the generation that were buying in the 1970s are generally the mothers or the grandmothers of people who inherited [the jewellery] and are now selling. Very often people have a collection of jewellery they have inherited and they don’t really know what to do with it. I get the feeling it is difficult to find the sort of buyers they need locally. And so I have been contacted by them for advice, not necessarily saying they want to sell. They want to know what they have got, what it’s worth, what the marketplace is like and if it is a good time to sell. Buying has increased as well recently, which is very encouraging. There has been a 16 per cent increase in buyer participation from the Middle East year-on-year, which is very healthy and encouraging.

What could be behind that?

What has happened, in line with a rise in online bidding, is the general awareness of our sales. So many more people now come to us through the online catalogues by browsing through our websites and finding jewellery. When I started 40 years ago there was only a paper catalogue, a printed catalogue. Now, and I don’t have the statistics, a large percentage of our buyers come having seen things on the internet. And I think that’s driving the increase in buyers and the increase in participation.

Tell me a bit more about your customers here. Who are they?

Clearly I can’t tell you anything about who these people are, but they come from across the region and are from all walks of life. In terms of sellers, the majority in the region are people inheriting from parents or grandparents. I love coming to the Middle East because I find that people are genuinely enthusiastic about gemstones and jewellery. It is part of the vernacular to admire and have jewellery, to wear it and enjoy wearing it. And it is nice speaking to people who have the same enthusiasm as me. Quite a sizeable percentage of our clients are male, who put together collections of gemstones.

Are they doing that from an investment perspective or because they love gems?

I mustn’t exaggerate the percentage. It’s not a huge number but it’s something you wouldn’t find in England or in Europe, men admiring gemstones just for gemstones. So that’s nice.

Of the collections here, what are they like? What do they include?

There has been a rapid increase in the value of coloured diamonds, which seems to create new world records every year in this particular rarefied field. After all, pink and blue diamonds are among the rarest of all. So whenever one appears at auction it creates a huge amount of interest. This year we posted a new world record for a vivid pink. We seem to keep breaking our own records. To put it in perspective, in May 2015 in Geneva we set a world record for a jewellery sale of US$161 million. And then precisely a year later we broke it again at $175m. All is alive and well there.

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