london. Lady Madeleine Lloyd Webber, wife of the British composer and Victorian art collector Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, has invested an initial £10,000 into a new antique jewellery fund that launches this November. The fund, Dazzling Capital, is a joint venture between Humphrey Butler, a London-based jeweller who previously worked at Christie’s, William Sporborg, a former jockey and tech investor, and Christopher Holdsworth Hunt, a City of London grandee who co-founded the brokerage Peel Hunt. Investors, including Lady Lloyd Webber, will be able to borrow the jewellery that the fund purchases “for special occasions”.
Many art funds have struggled to succeed, but Dazzling Capital’s partners believe that antique jewellery could buck the trend, not least because its materials carry an inherent value (this can account for up to 75% of an item’s value). Managing Director Sporborg says that he and his colleagues hope to raise a total £1m to spend on items valued at between £1,000 and £100,000. Such an injection of cash into an under-capitalised market will enable the fund to negotiate more attractive trades, he says.
Like the wider art market, the jewellery market has suffered over the past 14-15 months but, says Sporborg, “people will always get married, or at least fall in love”. Market observers believe that after the fund’s planned three years of investment, it could produce a low double-digit return.
Dazzling Capital will buy both at auction and through dealers, predominantly in the UK. “Whatever makes us money,” says Sporborg, who is responsible for all legal, financial and regulatory matters for the fund.
Since 2006, Sporborg and Holdsworth Hunt have together launched four funds that invest in thoroughbred racehorses. This is the first time they have teamed up with Butler who, in 2004, sold to the Louvre a diamond and emerald set of jewels that were a gift from Napoleon to his second wife, Marie Louise of Austria, for $4.5m.
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