Displaying items by tag: yves bouvier

On a sunny morning in late February, Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art dealer, flew into Nice and drove 20 miles along the French Riviera to Monaco to meet his top client, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Bouvier had come to work out the final payment for Mark Rothko’s No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red), which Rybolovlev had agreed to buy for €140 million back in August. Bouvier, 51, entered the lobby of the cream-colored, belle époque mansion where Rybolovlev’s penthouse apartment overlooks Monte Carlo’s yacht-filled marina.

Assuming business as usual, Bouvier approached a man he thought was one of Rybolovlev’s bodyguards.

Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev had decided to send off a tough 2014 in New York City. The Monaco-based billionaire had been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons after a Swiss judge awarded his ex-wife Elena $4.5 billion in their seven-year divorce battle. An avid art collector, Rybolovlev decided to spend New Year’s Eve with Sandy Heller, Steve Cohen’s well-known art advisor. As they exchanged war stories, one particular tale made his jaw drop: it was about a beautiful "Nude" by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani that Cohen sold for a juicy $93.5 million to a mystery buyer. What Heller didn’t know was that behind the veil of anonymity stood Rybolovlev, fuming internally on that December 31. Rybolovlev had paid his trusted friend and art broker Yves Bouvier $118 million for the piece, more than $22 million above what he just found out the market value should’ve been, including the fee.