Cartoon Girl goes for $25m at Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction
INTERNATIONAL – Inside, the rich spent millions on art and fine wine. Outside, tear gas filled the streets, as an anxious Hong Kong was again engulfed by protests.
Those two scenes — the first, at an art auction inside the city’s modernistic convention center, the second, in the neon-lit roads of the nearby Wan Chai district — seemed to capture the dissonance that has become the new normal for Hong Kong.
Week after week, as protesters have clashed with police, the city’s wealthy have largely carried on. While property values and stock prices have dipped, the 10 richest tycoons who derive their fortunes from Hong Kong are still worth $197 billion, just 4% less than when the protests started in mid-June, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Source: iol.co.za
