Update: Halsey Minor

For those following the Halsey Minor legal disputes with Christies, Sotehby's and now Bank of America Bloomberg has a good recap of what is going on. Phillips is now involved in selling some of the art, and according the Bloomberg article has made significant concessions to win the consignment.

The proposed sales would resolve a delinquent loan to CNET Networks Inc. founder Halsey Minor, who borrowed $25 million from ML Private Finance beginning in 2007, with art as collateral. The bank sued Minor and his trust in December 2008 for failure to repay the loan. Last October, ML Private Finance obtained a court judgment for $21.6 million, and this year petitioned the court to allow Christie’s to auction 103 works.

Minor himself had originally contacted Christie’s about handling the sale, but then turned to auction house Phillips de Pury.

“We at Christie’s were not happy about this development,’’ said Robert Manley, a senior vice president, in an affidavit. The auction house last month paid $600,000 in advance to cover the cost of having the works shipped to New York from California, photographed and prepped for sale, according to the affidavit.

Phillips fought back by offering to pay Minor 108 percent of the hammer price, an arrangement that shares the buyer’s fees. It’s a costly business-hunting tactic that auction houses reserve for only the most desirable material.

Changing Taste

The Phillips proposal also promised to waive all sale- related expenses and to give the works the marquee treatment in the firm’s new midtown-Manhattan gallery. The proposal shows renderings of Phillips’s triple-height windows featuring two major works from the Minor collection, Richard Prince’s 2004 “Hollywood Nurse’’ and Mark Newson’s 1981 serpentine aluminum “Lockheed Lounge.”

To read the full article, click HERE.