Artnet AG CEO Jacob Pabst resigned late Sunday, the night before the Berlin-based company’s annual general meeting.
Pascal Decker, the chairman of the company’s Supervisory Board, told shareholders about the resignation as the meeting began. While Pabst’s 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. Pabst is the son of Artnet’s founding CEO Hans Neuendorf, who stepped down in 2012.
Andrew E. Wolff—who holds about 98.93 percent of Artnet shares, according to boerse.de, and also owns rival platform Artsy—will serve as interim chief executive. Earlier this year, Wolff’s Beowolff Capital offered a voluntary public takeover of the company. Jan Petzel, managing director of Wolff’s Leonardo Art Holdings, said he was surprised by Pabst’s resignation but pleased the annual meeting went forward.
According to an Artnet AG corporate announcement, 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.
The meeting itself was one-sided, according to Handelsblatt. Artnet’s management wasn’t in the room, and questions about the 2025 financial year went unanswered despite the Beowolff takeover.
Dirk Hagemann, of investor-protection group DSW, told Handelsblatt that the meeting should have been canceled given the absence of management, but added that Wolff’s 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.)
Former major shareholder Rüdiger K. Weng, CEO of Weng Fine Art AG, called Pabst’s exit a “runaway” 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 “absurd,” saying he sees no wrongdoing and that a “Gordian knot that has blocked the company for years has finally been dissolved.”
Artnet did not answer a request for comment before publication time.
