American billionaire plans to launch IPO for his Rembrandt collection
American billionaire Thomas Kaplan is planning to launch an IPO for his Rembrandt collection. “To my mind, the best way to evangelise for Rembrandt is by giving millions, maybe tens of millions, of ordinary people the opportunity to own a Rembrandt,” Kaplan told The Art Newspaper. Exactly how the ownership will work is unclear.
Kaplan owns the Leiden Collection, the world’s largest private collection of Dutch Golden Age Paintings. The collection consists of 220 artworks, including 17 paintings and sketches by Rembrandt van Rijn, as well as works by Johannes Vermeer, Gerrit Dou, Jan Lievens, Jan Steen, and Frans van Mieris.
Most of the pieces in Kaplan’s collection are worth many millions of euros. In recent years, he’s loaned some of the pieces to various museums, including the H’Art museum in Amsterdam and the Louvre in Paris. But with his children showing little interest in owning art, Kaplan is now looking for something else to do with the collection, he told the newspaper. “I'm looking to see whether I can take the entire collection public.”
He is considering a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. If he has his way, soon millions of people could own a piece of Rembrandt. Kaplan intends to remain the majority owner of the paintings. He also said that the proceeds would be used to continue lending the collection, among other things.
Job Ubbens, former director of Christie’s auction house, is a bit skeptical of the idea. “I do wonder how seriously you should take this as an investment,” Ubbens told De Telegraaf. “It seems like a kind of Ajax share to me. It’s fun, but you mainly buy it for sentiment. As an investment, it seems a bit nonsensical.”
Ubbens also wonders how Kaplan plans to share ownership of the paintings. “How will that work with shareholder meetings, for example? Besides, there have been rumors for some time that he wants to monetize his collection. Is this how Kaplan intends to do it?”
