{"id":53418,"date":"2025-10-01T03:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T03:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/53418\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T03:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T03:58:07","slug":"artnet-ceo-jacob-pabst-resigns-ahead-of-annual-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/53418\/","title":{"rendered":"Artnet CEO Jacob Pabst Resigns Ahead of Annual Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tArtnet AG<\/a> CEO Jacob Pabst resigned late Sunday, the night before the Berlin-based company\u2019s annual general meeting. <\/p>\n

\n\tPascal Decker, the chairman of the company\u2019s Supervisory Board, told shareholders about the resignation as the meeting began. While Pabst\u2019s contract had expired at the end of August, he cited a failure to reach an agreement on continuing in the role, according to the German language business publication Handelsblatt<\/a>. Pabst is the son of Artnet\u2019s founding CEO Hans Neuendorf,\u00a0who stepped down in 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAndrew E. Wolff\u2014who holds about 98.93 percent of Artnet shares, according to boerse.de, and also owns rival platform Artsy\u2014will serve as interim chief executive. Earlier this year, Wolff\u2019s Beowolff Capital offered a voluntary public takeover<\/a>\u00a0of the company. Jan Petzel, managing director of Wolff\u2019s Leonardo Art Holdings, said he was surprised by Pabst\u2019s resignation but pleased the annual meeting went forward.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to an Artnet AG corporate announcement<\/a>, shareholders at the meeting were given an overview of the 2024 financial year and an outlook for the remainder of 2025. The company emphasized cost savings from an ongoing restructuring program and pointed to growth opportunities in artificial intelligence, including an AI-powered chatbot. The meeting also approved the creation of authorized capital for a possible increase of up to 50 percent of share capital.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe meeting itself was one-sided, according to\u00a0Handelsblatt.\u00a0Artnet\u2019s management wasn\u2019t in the room, and questions about the 2025 financial year went unanswered despite the Beowolff takeover.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirk Hagemann, of investor-protection group DSW, told\u00a0Handelsblatt\u00a0that the meeting should have been canceled given the absence of management, but added that Wolff\u2019s takeover was likely the only way to keep the lights on. He blamed years of high fees and payments to the founding Neuendorf family for eroding shareholder value, citing $2.1 million in fees and travel expenses paid to founder Hans Neuendorf since 2018. (Requested disclosures dating back to 2012 were again not provided to shareholders.) <\/p>\n

\n\tFormer major shareholder R\u00fcdiger K. Weng, CEO of Weng Fine Art AG, called Pabst\u2019s exit a \u201crunaway\u201d and said he will pursue civil and criminal claims against members of the Neuendorf family and current and former supervisory board members. Decker dismissed the allegations as \u201cabsurd,\u201d saying he sees no wrongdoing and that a \u201cGordian knot that has blocked the company for years has finally been dissolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tArtnet did not answer a request for comment before publication time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artnet AG CEO Jacob Pabst resigned late Sunday, the night before the Berlin-based company\u2019s annual general meeting. Pascal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[45535,442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-53418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-artnet-ag","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}