LONDON JEWELER RUSSIAN ORIGIN the Caribbean passport - said of a maxi ARTSINOVICH OWNER jewelry house MAXIMILIAN LONDON AND FOUNDER OF THE FOUNDATION MAXIMILIAN ART FOUNDATION, kol LEKTSIONER and philanthropist, whose interests are by no means limited habitually for a businessman earning money.
Maxim, why do you call your company "investment boutique" today?
M. A .: Yes, today we are actually an investment boutique. And that's why. In 2014, the ruble collapsed, oil prices fell more than three times, and in one month the world became completely different. Therefore, today we all live in a different reality. Our company operates from London, Dubai, New York, Hong Kong, Geneva and Moscow. The bulk of our customers are concentrated in Asia, because Asia is today more than 3 billion people. China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam - this is a very fast growing market. Europe is slowly and steadily decaying. The British, French, Italians, Spaniards, Germans - they no longer need anything. They have problems with refugees, they have problems with taxes, the middle class and rich people don’t know how to survive today. However, the global luxury goods market is still being created in Europe by Europeans. And the main legislators of the jewelry industry are, of course, the French. All the best jewelry is created only on Place Vendome and in the private ateliers around her, and it is almost impossible to compete with her mastodons such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, Chaumet. Even English brands such as Graff, Moussaieff and Garrard, which, incidentally, are already over 100 years older than Cartier, can not be compared with the French in luxury, design and elegance. One way or another, American, English and Swiss brands all attract European designers from France and Italy. French and Italian ateliers create products for foreign jewelry houses, because Europeans themselves are no longer buyers.
Let us return to our investment boutique - we are a small, private and very closed to prying company company that can quickly adapt to the realities of today's market. In addition, we are not a public company at all. MaximiliaN London is such a Savile Row of jewelery or, if you like, tailor made jewelery product designed by order. All products are only Piece Unique, and this is exactly what our customers want - individuality. They have long outgrown all the world famous jewelry brands and do not want to overpay for unique stones in famous boutiques at 300-500% higher than our wholesale price just because the name of a famous brand is on the box! Today, all rich people have learned to understand the quality of stones and their prices, and they are only ready for smart buy. We work as financial consultants who help clients solve alternative investment issues - transfer part of their cash assets, but not more than 3-5% of their size, to gems, art objects and collection wines.
Because the gem, and I will not tire of repeating it, is the most compact financial instrument in the world on Earth, created by Mother Nature and containing huge, sometimes simply gigantic funds!
Tell us what it can give your customers?
M. A .: If we talk about Russian citizens, then you need to understand that at the end of June 2016 the financial amnesty for capital abroad was over. There are several million people in our country who over the past 25 years have deliberately exported huge capital abroad, thus removing them from the Russian economy. This is completely open data, and the Ministry of Finance, together with financial intelligence, annually calculates all this. Believe me, everyone knows who, where and how much! Of course, this is a big problem for Russia - after all, it was not just that the national currency collapsed and it was not all a matter of oil alone. Now there are trillions of Russian dollars in Western banks that have been leaving there since 1991, and our government has given another year so that people can declare what is in their assets abroad and “clean up the ends”. And then, after 2017, regardless of whether they bring this money back to Russia or not, but they will have to pay either all in the form of fines, or pay such fines and taxes, which will not seem enough! Free storage of money in offshore accounts will end from the beginning of 2018. What will happen then? And then all the people who have a Russian passport, regardless of whether they live in America, in Europe, in Dubai, in Asia, will pay taxes in Russia.
Everything will become like in the USA with their IRS tax administration, the state machine will get you everywhere in the world and crush you. Russia has signed and ratified agreements with the FATF-GAFI (Financial Action Task Force) and the FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance), and now such a fight begins with the laundering of illegally obtained funds and funds that are not paying Russian taxes abroad, which is scary even for oneself imagine! There are very few tax havens in the world: the Caribbean, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Liechtenstein with Gibraltar! They will also be gone soon!
That is, either you remain Russian citizens and begin to pay taxes here and now, or you simply renounce Russian citizenship, apply for a European or American passport and become taxpayers of other countries, but then it will be significantly more expensive in taxes. A 13% income tax in Russia is not so much!
What does this have to do with your business?
M. A .: We can help our clients, regardless of their origin, to transfer part of their fortune (but not more than 5%) into alternative investments not for the sake of superprofits, but only for the sake of preserving capital. Alternative investments are investments in rare and natural gems, gold and platinum bullions, antique art and expensive collection wines, numismatics, and collection cars.
Oil prices are falling, and demand for rare collectible gems continues to rise. A lot of companies on Earth are engaged in the production and production of white diamonds, and their prices are subject to financial risks during crises along with the market for other raw materials. And here is the market for colored gemstones, i.e. colored diamonds: pink, blue, orange, green, red diamonds (the rarest), as well as rubies, sapphires and emeralds - this is a very closed market. This is a closed club, which is difficult to get into, it is only for those who understand what it is about. We are a guide there. We earn our 10% commission on helping people place their capital by investing in colored gemstones. As real estate or stock brokers. And why do their prices continue to rise?
Because the population of our planet is increasing at a frantic pace, and there are less and less stones. We ordered a special study in London, a major consulting agency, entitled “Dynamics of rising prices for colored gemstones from 1913 to 2013,” which showed that in 1913, just a hundred years ago, a little more than 2 billion people lived on Earth. And today we are 7 billion 200 million people, in 15 years there will be 9 billion. At the same time, these days people very quickly become millionaires. I even read somewhere that 30 new millionaires are appearing in China every minute. And all of them, even if, like Mark Zuckerberg, walk in slippers and stretched trainings, are consumers of luxury goods. They give jewelry to their girls and wives. Therefore, we offer our Hight Net Worth Individuals customers to first of all think about their future and invest a small part of their annual income in precious stones and precious metals. This is a kind of creation of a personal private pension fund. Starting your retirement savings now, you will be pleasantly surprised at how much you will have assets in your depositary cell in Monaco or Singapore by 2030-2040. Then you will remember me with a kind word! Everywhere and at all times, over many millennia and centuries, precious metals and stones have been a reliable asset that protects its owners from currency risks, the risks of a collapse and the collapse of financial systems! This, in the language of economists, is "quasi-money", which has a price in any country in the world, at any time and in any situation. Forgive me for cynical comparisons, but during the siege of Leningrad they bought bread and food for diamonds and gold, saving the lives of their relatives and children, and some enterprising Swiss bankers bought whole Jewish families from Nazis from concentration camps for gold and precious stones - the Holocaust Museum has evidence of this documents.
And what about the liquidity of precious stones?
M. A .: It is important to understand that stones cannot be sold in one day. But annually their prices only rise. I’ve been in this business for 20 years, and my experience is that the cost of colored and precious stones grows by at least 10-12% annually. Believe me, I travel like Indiana Jones, and I'm on airplanes for at least 200 days a year. I go to Madagascar, to Mozambique, to Brazil, to Thailand and Tanzania - we travel around the world in search of the best raw materials. A month ago, I was in Burma, high in the mountains, descending into a mine and digging myself in the ground at a mine in the village of Mogok. Because I know that the prices of raw materials, i.e. on uncut stones, they grow dramatically, since there are less and less good raw materials. Nature created its precious minerals 7-10-15 million years ago! Human life for a stone is just a small flash. Demand for good and rare stones is constantly growing! We do not urge all our wealth to invest in precious stones, no. We say: “Okay, this is an alternative investment, we know a lot about them and we will find you the best stones with Swiss gemological certificates at the best wholesale price on the market.” In addition, this is a long-term investment for decades, and not daily stock speculation, it is precisely the opportunity to diversify your portfolio, a kind of pension contribution, if you want. No matter how rich a person may be, a moment may come when he suddenly loses all his assets. Read Kommersant and Vedomosti every day, and you will understand that everything is like in the 90s: they put, killed, took away, blamed, fled, went bankrupt! And alternative investments protect and often save a person from collapse. This is such a stash for a rainy day, as our grandmothers taught us back in the USSR. Pension funds today are unreliable, banks are crumbling like house of cards and merging banking secrets with the special services, entire countries and currencies disappear, bank deposits are burning up, as they were in Cyprus! But liquid stones, paintings by old masters and collection wines are those purchases that men should think about as early as 35-40 years old and calmly spend 5-10% of their annual income on them up to 60-65 years old. You will be pleasantly surprised at what state you will be able to accumulate in 20-30 years of your alternative investments. For example, due to inflation and high demand for high-quality raw materials, prices for Colombian emeralds have risen from $ 3,000 per carat to $ 25,000 per carat from 2000 to today. Now look for yourself at what price great jewelry brands offer you to buy such emeralds! At 150,000 - 200,000 dollars per carat! This is a robbery, and there are no more fools today! So think for yourself ...
How do you mine stones?
M. A .: My partners and I have two emerald deposits in Colombia. We produce stones in an open way, then we cut them in the USA or in Thailand, after we certify them in American and Swiss gemological laboratories, and then, already in faceted form, we sell them to all the world's top ten jewelry houses. Our group of partners is one of the largest traders in colored gemstones in the world. In natural emeralds of the highest quality, without synthetics and various additives, today we have no equal in the world. We are a very aggressive company in terms of sales, we always keep our word and fulfill our obligations. MaximiliaN London jewelry is created by me from my own resources. In production, I have partners, there are partners in sales, as well as dealers and distributors around the world. If there is a crisis in one country, then prosperity in another part of the world. Russia and Kazakhstan are now stagnating, Europe is slowing down, and meanwhile Asia and Africa are on the rise with Latin America. We sell everything there.
A new business for me - the MaximiliaN Silver Label line of silver jewelry - I own 50 to 50% with my brother Denis, and in MaximiliaN London jewelry house I am the only owner, and soon one of the Royal families from the Gulf will become a co-owner of the House. I am a London jeweler of Russian origin with a Caribbean passport. I am very proud of the fact that I am Russian, but at the same time I am not a Russian jeweler - we are a 200% Western jewelry brand. In the jewelry world, every second brand is somehow created by immigrants from Russia or the USSR, this is an obvious fact! For example, Graff, Jacob, Marshak, Gaydamak, Yana, Orlov, Yanush, Bellini and many, many others. We respect them and cooperate with many. Do you know. For example, what are the most creative in the development of jewelry design and fixing stones around the world are Armenians? When they were persecuted by the Turks, the Armenians tried to learn such skill that it was applicable all over the world, and they became the best jewelers, like the Jews, for example, the best cutters and diamond dealers!
Jewelry in a single copy is not an expensive pleasure. What is the main market for your company?
M. A .: Our brand is best known in the Middle East market. I myself have been a resident of the Emirates for 20 years and in the winter I live mainly on Palm, I like warmth and the sea, I conduct my international business from Dubai. We are very strong in working with the royal families of the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. They don’t give a damn about how much a barrel of oil costs today and what, where and against whom the sanctions are in the world. The countries are very young, the culture is just being formed, but there are unlimited financial resources and love for everything luxurious and brilliant. We will continue to help them spend money! It is no coincidence that Forbes Middle East magazine recognized us as the best jewelry house for investment and preservation of capital!
What else does your area of interest extend to?
M. A .: Art is my old passion. The Maximilian Art Foundation supports many projects. So, last year we organized an exhibition of my friend photographer Steve McCurry in the Hermitage, and now we plan to hold an exhibition of another of my great friends - photographer Patrick Demarchelier. And I am grateful to God and fate that life brought me to such wonderful people and I can open them and show their creations to our sophisticated audience. Working on such projects is a huge happiness for me and an important part of my life.
I regularly visit art exhibitions Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, Biennale in Venice. I just returned from the FIAC exhibition in Paris, where I acquired several works for my collection. Today it has more than a hundred works by contemporary artists, and over time it all transforms into a private museum. I am very inspired by the stories of collectors such as Tretyakov, Schukin, Bernard Arnault. Most recently, on October 20 this year, we were at a gala dinner at the Louis Vuitton Foundation museum as part of a delegation of philanthropists of the Hermitage at the personal invitation of Bernard Arnault in honor of the opening of an exhibition of the Schukin collection from the collections of the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage. Our Club of Friends of the Hermitage presented a sculpture of contemporary Russian artist Yaroslav Ksenofontov, working under the pseudonym Xeno, during his visit to the Louis Vuitton Foundation Museum.This sculpture was carved by the author in the style of cyberpunk from green jasper, and it exists in only one copy in the world! Now, contemporary Russian artists will be represented in the best French private museum of modern art.
Sport is also an integral part of my life, and every year I participate in five or six full marathons of 42 km in Paris, London, Geneva, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, Chicago, Miami and London. Now I am engaged in the help of Natalia Rodionovna Malinovskaya, the daughter of a great man - Marshal of the Soviet Union Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky, in publishing a novel by her father and his book about the first Russian expeditionary force, thanks to which France won the First World War against Germany (1914-1918), and then scared betrayed our soldiers and officers, throwing them into concentration camps and not giving the opportunity to return to their homeland and save their country from the Bolsheviks. Meanwhile, the Great October Revolution and civil war erupted in our country. A terrible and tragic story that must not be forgotten! If we do not publish these books now, then who? The Lord sends us trials and obedience all the time, and it is only for us to decide whether to notice it or to pass by. Well, the main project of my life is the construction of the Hermitage Museum in Dubai.
Unfortunately, with the fall in oil prices from $ 140 per barrel to 40, the government of the Emirates suddenly ran out of money for art! But sooner or later we will make a project, and the museum, which I conceived as the largest museum building in the world with an area of more than one million square meters, will become a magnet and a point of attraction for tens of millions of tourists in the Middle East who fly here on vacation and have nowhere to go except the beach and shopping centers! A country without culture and art simply cannot have a worthy future! I myself am trying to make my life interesting and eventful and do not expect anything from anyone. My business helps me do things that I like, leave a mark on history, and thanks to all this, just being a happy person.
Interviewed by Irina Malkova
