Broad Arrow Auctions has been steadily growing in the US over the past three years, but it always had an eye on Europe, too. In late 2024 it announced that it is to replace RM Sotheby’s as the official auction house of Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este – and now it has revealed the several highly experienced new recruits, mostly from the Bonhams Europe team.
The two biggest names include Philip Kantor, who will become vice-chairman of Europe and senior car specialist when he starts at Broad Arrow in June 2025. He began at Christie’s in 2000 and moved to Bonhams in 2007, becoming a true figurehead of Bonhams Europe in recent years.
Broad Arrow has also recruited Gregory Tutyens from Bonhams Europe, who will become car specialist and head of consignments for Belgium and The Netherlands. He’s another big hitter, best known for the Bonhams Zoute sale. Philip and Gregory are both Belgium based, and between them cover Belgium, France, Germany and Netherlands in terms of territory and language.
Other recruits from Bonhams include: Paul Gaucher, car specialist and head of consignments for Switzerland; Valérie Simonet, head of operations, Europe; and Ryan Cigana, client development manager, EMEA.
There are new faces from elsewhere, too, including: Daniele Turrisi, consultant, Italy; Jean-Louis Baldanza, consultant, France; and Simon Drake, director of marketing, EMEA.
We spoke to president Kenneth Ahn and EMEA region head Karsten Le Blanc about the plans, ahead of the news being made public.
“The company is now about three years old,” said Karsten. “With nine of the ten co-founders being US based, and the US the dominant market that it is, it was obvious that we were going to focus first on establishing ourselves there. But with our ambitions of becoming a more global, internationally active auction house and private sales business, we were always moving in Europe.
“We made our first baby steps in 2023 when we hired two people in Germany, with a showroom and an office. And then, in April 2024, we established our UK presence based at Bicester Heritage, and four more car specialists came on board, including Joe Twyman, Robert Glover and Harry Wassell. Matt Coles also joined as a memorabilia specialist, with a particular strength and focus on modern Formula 1. In fact, we’ve already run three successful online memorabilia sales out of the UK and Switzerland since he has arrived. We also hired Yves Boitel, who had been the right-hand man of Lukas Hüni in Switzerland.”
The first Broad Arrow sale will be at Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este this year, taking over from the RM Sotheby’s sale that took place every other year, alternating with the company’s Monaco Historic Grand Prix sale.
“That is a major coup for us,” said Karsten. “It is the most prestigious concours event in Europe, and super well established. BMW AG, being the owner, is obviously a blue-chip partner to be working with, so for us to have been chosen as its new partner for the next three years is a real endorsement.”
“It was important to align ourselves with a world-class event,” confirmed Kenneth. “In terms of how we are going to be different, a couple of things right off the bat. One is that RM used to do an auction only once every two years. We will be holding an auction annually in partnership with Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este.
“The second thing is that we’re expecting about 70 cars, versus, historically, between 40 to 50. What we have discussed with BMW is that we want this to be very successful for not only the Saturday [at Villa d’Este], but on the public day on Sunday at Villa Erba, which is where the auction takes place. Let’s try to make this more of an integrated event versus having ‘concours on this side and auction over there’.”
Kenneth continues: “I think from a client engagement and dialogue and momentum perspective, [a sale] once a quarter seems to be a good pace, so our regular cadence would be once a quarter in the US, and then eventually building to four in Europe/UK, so that we’re relevant throughout the year and we’re always there to help clients buy or sell.”
Broad Arrow’s first European sale will take place at Villa Erba, Cernobbio, Italy on May 24-25, 2025.
In response, Bonhams has already started recruiting replacements and is expected to announce a new line-up at the end of February. Meanwhile, RM Sotheby’s has announced a sale in Milan, just ahead of Villa d’Este.
