Stake in 186-kg gold cube may be sold in Austrian insolvency
A stake in a 186-kilogram (410 pound) gold cube is being prepared to be sold by the administrators of insolvent Austrian investor Klemens Hallmann.
The businessman owns a 32% stake in the Castello Cube, created by German artist Niclas Castello, according to Creditreform, a creditors’ protection association. Hallmann’s share of the hollowed out, 24-carat conceptual artwork will be transferred to the restructuring administrator to sell to maximize compensation for his creditors, they said.
Using the current market price of $4,010 an ounce, the value of the gold in the entire cube would be around $23 million. Creditor associations didn’t specify how a sales process would work, or how the stake sale would be impacted by its ownership structure.
The Castello Cube stirred public attention in 2022 when it was placed mysteriously in New York’s Central Park for a day. The artwork, which was not intended to be sold according to its website, has been used to garner attention for an accompanying crypto token launched by Castello.
Hallmann, whose insolvency proceedings as an entrepreneur opened in August, has invested in sectors such as film and real estate. He has also seen the collapse of his real estate developer SÜBA AG into insolvency earlier this year. The company is now in liquidation after it failed to make a payment as part of its restructuring plan.
Creditors of Hallmann could receive an additional payment as part of a “super-quota” dependent on the sales process for his stake in the artwork, according to creditor association KSV1870. The restructuring plan approved by investors as part of the self-administration process otherwise envisages a payment of 35% of their original claim.
A spokesperson for Castello didn’t respond to a request for comment. Hallmann said in a statement that he will “continue to work with full transparency, reliability and consistency on implementing the approved restructuring plan” and his representative declined further comment on the potential sale.
(By Libby Cherry and Mark Burton)
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Comments
James POLLOCK
Your story on the gold cube indicates you know very little about gold.
Taking the mass as 186 kilograms, this is the equivalent of 5,980 troy ounces. As there are 12 troy ounces to the (now obsolete) troy pound, it is 498.3 troy pounds.
At US$4010 per troy ounce the value of 186 kilograms of gold is $US23.89 million.
It is sad to see how Bloomberg’s standards and knowledge has fallen.
Regards,
James