International Herald Tribune- Zelda Cheatle, a London photography gallery owner, is close to sealing one of her biggest and most peculiar deals. In late August, she expects to sell about 4,000photographs in a single transaction, but the buyers will not be allowed to keep the works.
Cheatle manages a photography investment fund, set up by the hedge fund WMG in London, which had raised the money to buy the photographs, including Brassai’s of Pablo Picasso in his studio and Eve Arnold’s Malcolm X, from a handful of investors.
WMG hopes the fund will make returns of as much as 50 percent over three years by buying and selling the art.
“With the right expertise and attitude, collecting photography is a good investment,” Cheatle, who spends all her time managing the fund, said while sifting through a stack of 1930s prints from Paris at WMG’s office in London.
As investors range far afield in search of places to put their money, hedge funds have expanded investments beyond stocks and bonds into art, wine, rare stamps and even soccer players. Money managers have begun to look at these so-called exotic assets as way to diversify risk while searching for assets that may provide a cushion if the five-year market boom comes to an end. Critics, however, call them too risky and opaque.
