Quebec-born philanthropist, great collector and former art magazine owner Louise T. Blouin has just lost another legal battle in court in New York. The decision handed down on February 13 forces her to accept the auction of her luxurious Hamptons property.
The sale set at US$89 million (including ten million in brokerage fees) will not allow him to pay off his debts on the 19-room property nicknamed La Dune. The amounts to be repaid to creditors would be 7 to 15 million higher. The sale was decided as part of a liquidation of assets for bankruptcy.
Ms. Blouin once hoped to obtain up to 140 million for the property, which she paid 13.5 million for in 1998. She contested the price obtained at the auction. She was defending herself alone because she couldn’t afford a lawyer, she said. The judge brushed aside his arguments. In summarizing this matter, the New York Times pointed out that only in the Hamptons, the vacation spot of the rich and famous on the east coast of the United States, can an 89 million transaction be presented as a failure.
“I didn’t make many mistakes,” the businesswoman said after selling her property. “You can’t judge someone because they have a problem once in their life. I’m sure Steve Jobs didn’t have a perfect track record. »
Hers looks more like a bell-shaped curve. The Central Islip court’s decision to uphold the result of the auction by Sotheby’s on January 24 marks another important step in the downfall of this businesswoman who was considered one of the richest people in the world at the turn of the century. Its recent setbacks do not stop in the United States. The Quebecor investigation office summarized the situation in 2022 as follows: “In recent years, she has been sued by a bank, a real estate brokerage firm, a law firm, a painting company, a Montreal architect as well as as buyers and a seller of luxurious residences. »
The flight from Dorval
Louise T. Blouin was born in Dorval in 1958. She experienced a meteoric rise to the top of the elite of New York and London at the end of the last century. His private parties in these two cities attracted upper high class world of finance and the arts.
His personal fortune has already been estimated at hundreds of millions by the Times of London which placed it between that of Madonna and the leading position of the Queen of England. Until around 2010, she was one of the 25 richest women in the world. Prosperity is also a family affair: her sister Hélène Blouin is married to billionaire Paul Desmarais Jr.
Financial success came to Louise Blouin quickly after her business studies at McGill. She first dated an heir to the Stewart-McDonald tobacco fortune then married John MacBain with whom she founded the classifieds magazine in 1987 Auto Hebdo available in hundreds of similar publications around the world and then in an online version. The Blouin empire was born there, around advertisements for used tanks.
After purchasing the Hamptons mansion renamed La Dune at the beginning of the century, Ms. Blouin divorced again to remarry Simon de Pury, an art auctioneer from New York, whom she met at one of the MacBain-Blouin couple’s social evenings. “Her power and her success, not to mention her Marie-Antoinette lifestyle, were aphrodisiacs,” explains Mr. de Pury in his memoirs written after the breakdown of this third marriage. He also summarized his ex’s way of conceiving of management through monologues “between Carlos Castaneda and the Wall Street Journalnew age spirituality and Fortune 500 “. She herself thus summed up her dreams of success in Guardian : “The international. The world “.
His solo career then focused on activities linked to the art world. In 2003, she founded Louise Blouin Media, which multiplies the purchases of magazines and websites, including Art + Auction, Modern Painters, Culture + Travel, guides to several major museums around the world (including the Louvre), the artinfo.com platform, plus 130 printed or digital media in total. There was even a plan to launch Blouin News with the aim of competing with CNN.
However, the successes of the media empire were based on a highly criticized model consisting basically of spending lavishly and poorly paying employees and even certain executives, or even not paying them while relocating certain activities to India, according to an article in art.net of 2017. The New York Post nicknamed her the Red Queen, due to her propensity to dress in that color and fire her colleagues. Louise Blouin Media (LBM) has become BlouinArtinfo. com Art + Auction still in operation.
Another key step was taken in 2006 with the creation of the Louise Blouin Foundation offering an exhibition, creation and research space located in Notting Hill in the English capital. Her goal was nothing less than “to use culture as a tool to find solutions to major political problems,” as she summarized in a 2009 interview with Duty. The published portrait was entitled The Autodidact and His Empire.
She then refused to talk about Quebec or her personal life. An interview request sent to the Foundation went unanswered this time.
The reality of overdue accounts began to emerge in 2014. Executives filed suit for non-payment of salaries. The case was settled out of court in 2020. A printer sued LBM demanding payment of US$715,000 in invoices and received $558,550 after three years of legal proceedings.
Loans on the luxury country house then swelled until liquidation was legalized last week. Ms. Blouin now lives in Switzerland with her last husband, Mathew Kabatoff, who accompanied her to court last week.