Latest from Detroit

When we last caught up on the situation, creditors of the city of Detroit were looking to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) collection as a source of cash, and experts had been hired by the DIA and the City to value the collection.

By the latest report, however, it seems that although the collection may be worth as much as $4.6bn, a sale of the artworks would not raise enough to pay the City's creditors.

The report in question was produced by Michael Plummer of Artvest Partners LLC, who was hired by the DIA to provide an expert opinion on:

1. The indicative value of the works in the DIA Collection; 
2. The feasibility and likely effects on the market and value realization of a sale of the DIA Collection under a variety of market and sale conditions;
3. Creditor-proposed sales of the DIA Collection;
4. Monetization alternatives described in Christie's report to the City of Detroit; and
5. Infirmities in any rebuttal expert reports

What Plummer concludes in the report (dated 8 July 2014) is that:

Rather than being a source of cash to creditors or a burden on the current city. In fact the DIA is the single most important cultural asset the City currently owns for rebuilding the vitality of the city. 

In response to the report, a spokesman for Kevyn Orr, the emergency financial manager for Detroit, said "The report makes it abundantly clear that selling art to settle debt will not generate the kind of revenue the city's creditors claim it will."

Whether the report will stop the creditors from chasing is another matter.

We previously reported that the next major stage of this saga is the trial to determine the fairness and feasibility of the restructuring plan submitted by the City, which was scheduled to start on 24 July. According to the Guardian, however, a federal judge overseeing Detroit's bankruptcy has scheduled the next hearing to start on 14 August 2014.

Read the full report here.
Source: The Guardian, 9 July 2014