Taylor Wessing advises Chinese company on EUR150m Euronext listing

Taylor Wessing in Paris has advised the Chinese group, World Art Net Group SA, on its EUR150 million listing on Euronext, becoming only the second Chinese company to list on the Paris-based exchange.

Based in Hong-Kong, World Art Net Group operates a website from Hangzhou dedicated to the art market (www.artokok.com), whose aim is to promote Chinese artists (information, auctions, exhibition rooms, promotions and sales of works by subscriber artists, catalogues, etc.).  The Chinese art market is currently going through an unprecedented boom, growing at the rate of 20% p.a., and World Art Net Group is planning to open an art gallery in Hong Kong and representative offices in Europe and Japan.  Subsequent to the listing, the company will increase its share capital substantially.

Along with appointed brokers, Invest Securities (Claude Breuil and Olivier Claret), the Taylor Wessing team advising on the listing comprised Alain de Foucaud (Partner) and Jian-Xu Huang, Jérôme Lemercier and Frédéric Lévy (Associates).

Alain de Foucaud, Claude Breuil and Olivier Claret comment:

“The listing of this company, which has tremendous potential, is a major opportunity for its development and a token of the attractiveness of the Paris stock market for Chinese companies.  Moreover, until today, there were no listed art dealers on the market. World Art Net Group’s activity as an art dealer is close to that of a broker on the capital markets, the art market and the securities market being often prompted by the same logic of investment”.

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