After a multi‑year slowdown, the gallery’s British arm reports an almost 90% drop in 2024 profit before tax amid weaker secondary‑market trading and cautious top‑tier buyers (October 2025).

London — Profits at the UK subsidiary of Hauser & Wirth, one of the world’s most influential commercial galleries, fell sharply in 2024 as the global art market continued to cool at the very top. Newly filed accounts show profit before tax dropping to about £1.16 million for the year to 31 December 2024, down from £9.30 million a year earlier — a fall of roughly 87.5%. Turnover almost halved to £68.29 million from £143.86 million. After tax, profit dwindled to £266,539 versus £6.41 million in 2023, underscoring how quickly earnings can vanish when seven‑ and eight‑figure resales dry up.

The company attributed the reversal primarily to “lower secondary‑market sales” — the resale of works by artists not under the gallery’s direct representation — a segment that tends to be more cyclical and heavily influenced by auction benchmarks. Dealers across London say would‑be consignors spent much of 2024 sitting on significant works rather than risk them in thinner public sales, opting instead for private transactions or simply delaying. Hauser & Wirth’s UK filing tells the story in the costs as well as in the top line: administrative expenses came in at £26.41 million, only marginally below 2023’s level, leaving the business less room to absorb a drop in gross profit.

The British arm’s figures come amid a broader, data‑driven slump. The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2025 estimates aggregate global sales fell 12% last year to $57.5 billion, the second annual decline since the post‑pandemic rebound. The report also highlights a notable bifurcation: the number of transactions rose an estimated 3%, but activity concentrated at lower price points while the high‑ticket lots that dominate headlines were scarcer. That pattern maps onto London’s experience, where costs remain high and cross‑border tax and logistics frictions can weigh on where consignors choose to sell.

Inside Hauser & Wirth, the UK numbers are only part of a much larger picture. The gallery now has 18 locations worldwide and has diversified into publishing, education and destination venues. Executives say that globally 2024 performance was broadly “aligned” with 2023, suggesting growth in other hubs and steadier primary‑market sales helped offset the UK shortfall. Still, London matters: it is where the gallery courts institutions, cultivates estates and meets many international collectors, and where its Mayfair flagship and Somerset campus anchor a highly visible brand.

The firm’s full accounts sketch a familiar arc of a cyclical business: operating profit slid to £1.64 million from £9.49 million; interest costs rose to £582,893; and a tax charge of £897,885 reduced the bottom line to a few hundred thousand pounds. Directors, who a year earlier recommended a £3.2 million dividend on 2023 profits, made no such recommendation for 2024. Cash generation weakened as well, reflecting slower deal velocity and tighter margins. None of this implies existential risk — the balance sheet remains serviceable — but it does confirm that even mega‑galleries are not insulated from a thinner supply of trophy works.

The auction sector provided little relief. Sotheby’s, contending with softer consignments and a more cautious clientele, undertook a wave of layoffs from late 2024 and reported a sharply wider loss for the year, citing lower commissions and higher restructuring charges. Christie’s also trimmed headcount in 2024 as it shifted focus toward private sales and tightly curated evening auctions. With fewer “guaranteed” blockbusters in the public rooms, the price discovery that fuels consignor confidence grew patchier, which in turn made dealers’ secondary‑market pitches harder to close.

At the same time, parts of the primary market proved resilient. Galleries with deep programs and strong institutional relationships continued to place new works by mid‑career and established artists with museums and long‑term collectors. That steadiness, however, rarely compensates for the profit contribution of a handful of major secondary deals in a good year. Hauser & Wirth’s model — straddling blue‑chip estates and contemporary stars — is designed to balance those forces, but 2024 showed how reliant the UK arm can be on a healthy resale pipeline to lift margins after fixed costs.

The gallery’s owners, Iwan and Manuela Wirth, have also spent recent years building out Artfarm, a hospitality group that includes the Fife Arms in Braemar, the Audley Public House in Mayfair and London’s Groucho Club. Artfarm’s 2024 accounts showed turnover rising but losses widening as the group invested in properties and weathered a temporary licence suspension at the Groucho following a police investigation into an alleged serious crime on the premises (no staff or members were implicated, and the club later reopened with new conditions). The episode had little direct bearing on Hauser & Wirth’s gallery results, but it underlined the tougher trading environment for culture‑adjacent businesses in the UK.

There were structural shifts as well. In mid‑2025, the Wirths relocated their tax residence to Switzerland after more than two decades in Britain, joining a broader outflow of high‑net‑worth individuals unsettled by changes to the UK’s non‑dom tax regime. While the move does not alter the day‑to‑day operations of the gallery, it captured a mood music familiar to London’s art world: costs are up, volatility is higher and the business case for keeping inventory in the UK must now be made more deliberately than in the 2010s.

Where does the market go from here? Much depends on the supply of top material. If borrowing costs continue to ease and equity markets stay firm, collectors could again feel confident about parting with masterpieces — the crucial first step toward a more liquid high end. Auction houses are already adjusting calendars and guarantee strategies to coax consignments back. Asia, particularly mainland China, remains the wild card; a sustained revival there would likely ripple through to London and New York. For now, the balance of evidence suggests 2025 will be a year of stabilisation rather than exuberance.

For Hauser & Wirth’s UK operation, that means focusing on the controllables: programming museum‑grade exhibitions that build artists’ long‑term markets; nurturing the next cohort of collectors; and using London as a convening point for private sales when public auctions look choppy. The 2024 accounts read as a cyclical low rather than a structural unravelling. But they are also a reminder that in a global market where the top tier has thinned, even the mightiest galleries are subject to the same gravitational forces as everyone else.

The message for the trade is clear. The era of easy money at the apex of the market has paused; storytelling, scholarship and carefully managed supply will do more heavy lifting than adrenaline‑charged evening sales. When the tide turns — as it eventually does — those who have kept artists’ markets healthy will be best placed to convert renewed confidence into sustainable profits. Until then, the UK’s biggest galleries, Hauser & Wirth included, will have to accept slimmer margins, more private deals and a longer runway to growth than they enjoyed just a few years ago.