A familiar face in the auction world, Rahul Kadakia has spent nearly three decades on Christie’s rostrum, selling some of the world’s most valuable jewels and art – from Elizabeth Taylor’s storied collection to the record‑breaking Oppenheimer Blue diamond.
Born in India, Kadakia started from the ground up: first as a jewellery boy in his family’s Mumbai business, then “tea boy” at Christie’s King Street, before learning the craft of auctioneering on the shores of Lake Geneva. He eventually landed at Rockefeller Center in New York, where he has led the house’s global jewellery department for more than a decade.
After years of flying in for marquee Hong Kong sales, the veteran auctioneer has now relocated to the city where he spent part of his childhood, taking on a new brief as Christie’s President for Asia Pacific.
Sitting down with The Value a few months into the role, Kadakia shares the stories behind his move, how he went from running errands to wielding a “borrowed” gavel at major sales, the making of the Oppenheimer Blue deal, and a “surprise lot”. He also discusses how the auction business – and its buyers – have changed, and his philosophy for leading one of the art world’s most competitive regions.
Rahul Kadakia | Christie’s President Asia Pacific and Head of Global Luxury and Asian & World Art Groups
Homecoming after 30 years
I’ve been travelling to Hong Kong since 1998. I’ve grown up with our colleagues here – they’ve known me since my early twenties at Alexandra House. I started taking auctions in the basement of the JW Marriott, then at the Convention Centre, and now at The Henderson. Hong Kong is woven into the fabric of my life.
My father was based in Kowloon in the jewellery and watch business and became close to Osvaldo Patrizzi, who had just started the watch auction house Antiquorum. They held their sales at the old Furama Hotel, and my father would take me along. Antiquorum would arrange a room and a babysitter for me; I’d have dinner there while the sale went on, then we’d go home. I wasn’t interested – I was six – but in a funny way, auctions have been around me from the beginning.
I came straight to Hong Kong after I was born and lived here until my parents sent me back to school. They should have kept me here and taught me Cantonese – big mistake. I’d come back in the holidays to see them in Mei Foo. I remember Lai Chi Kok amusement park – and Ocean Park was the ultimate treat once or twice a year. My father would take my sister and me, and we'd be amazed by that endlessly long escalator up the hill.
The other day I had lunch with a good friend of Christie’s, Paulo Pong, who manages Ocean Park. He said, “When you want to bring your kids, let me know. I’ll make sure it’s special.” These days I rarely go to Kowloon – all the business is in Central – but I live in Repulse Bay and can see Ocean Park from my apartment. My kids know their grandfather used to take me there, so now they’re asking me to go with them. We’ll do that once we’re a bit more settled.
Christie's Asia-Pacific headquarters at The Henderson in Central, where Kadakia is now based
Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park (closed in 1997) and Ocean Park
The call to Hong Kong
Last year, Bonnie, our CEO, came to me and said, “Rahul, our president in Asia has decided to move on. Do you have any ideas? Anyone in Hong Kong or elsewhere in Asia, maybe at another house, we should talk to?” I said I had no idea but would think about it. I was very settled in New York. My three kids went to school two minutes from home, my wife’s parents were nearby, and I loved our office at Rockefeller Plaza and my team. The role wasn’t on my radar.
One evening, driving to JFK for a Cartier exhibition at the V&A in London, I started thinking: I’ve been coming to Hong Kong for thirty years. I know everyone in the regional offices. Clients recognise me from the rostrum. Our global teams are so strong that I felt I could take on broader responsibility. I trust them completely – they’ll come to me when needed, and I’ll still be involved in the major sales and auctions. So why not run a region with colleagues I’ve known and loved for years?
When I mentioned it to Bonnie, I joked that my wife might kill me for not asking her first. “If she agrees,” I said, “how about I run the office for the next few years?” She said, “Great idea, let’s talk.”
So here I am, a few months in. The kids are in school, I have my Hong Kong ID – which I’m very proud of – and I've got a local license. When I first moved to Geneva, I spoke maybe five words of French; by the time I left, I was conducting auctions in French. I hope it will be the same here – that I’ll speak good Chinese before I leave. I want my kids to understand the culture and beauty of Asia. One day they might go to America or Europe, but if I can give them six to eight years here, that’s the best gift they’ll have.
Christie's Global CEO Bonnie Brennan with Kadakia at a Hong Kong auction preview
Starting at the bottom in Mumbai
In India, if you’re a boy from a jewellery family, you don’t really have a choice – you go into the business.
I was in boarding school until I was sixteen. When I came back to Mumbai, I started university – classes from seven to ten, then home to change and straight to the store. I wasn’t the “family boy”; I started from the ground up. I went to the bank, ran diamond parcels across town, delivered pieces to clients, drove my younger cousin to school – everything.
I’d always been around jewellery, but when money was involved, you had to be careful. You need to understand cost, selling price, margins; you want to be fair to clients. I’d go to the market to get jewellery polished and spend time in the workshops watching craftsmen work – counting how many carats went into a necklace, tracking gold usage and wastage. These were tiny, hot, humid rooms with low ceilings. Everyone sat cross-legged on the floor, and I sat with them.
I began at Christie’s as a graduate trainee in 1996. Just like at the family store, I’d come into the office and make tea for my senior colleagues. Then I’d catalogue jewellery, sit with the head of department, and try to understand how he arrived at a price and what he thought it might make at auction.
At lunch they’d say, “Rahul, can you go and buy sandwiches for the whole department?” and I’d go. I'd walk up and down the stairs, visit other departments, meet colleagues, go to the canteen. It's a big building – an entire block – and I know it inside out because I explored every corner when I was twenty‑two.
Christie's global headquarters on King Street, London
St. Moritz, Switzerland
From Lake Geneva to New York
A year later, they moved me to Geneva, where the major sales took place. I worked on the two flagship sales in May and November, and at the time we also held auctions in St. Moritz every February. All the big shots were there. We'd stage an exhibition at the Palace Hotel on the lake, which in winter would freeze solid; they'd run horse races on the ice, with tents everywhere and the banks as sponsors.
In Geneva, the lake sits right in the city centre; you can just walk out and jump in for a swim. Even now, the jewellery team goes for a run most mornings during exhibitions. We run for about half an hour, then jump into the lake. If it’s five degrees, you stay in for five minutes. Four degrees, four minutes. Six degrees, six minutes. Then we have coffee together in the cafeteria before work.
Geneva was brilliant. It’s where I learned to become an auctioneer and put together bigger deals. After seven years there, my boss, François Curiel – who hired me at the very beginning and mentored me throughout my years at Christie’s – said, “I need you to go to New York because the head of our US jewellery operations has decided to leave, and I need someone to take over the department there.” I was thirty. I said I’d think about it. He said, “Yes, you can think about it, but you have to go.” I said, “Okay, thanks for the choice.”
It turned out to be perfect timing. I went in 2004, and the market completely turned. Diamond prices went up, coloured stone prices went up, and jewellery started making numbers I couldn’t have imagined. There were ups and downs, of course, but I ended up spending twenty‑one years in New York.
François Curiel, Chairman of Christie's Europe, with Kadakia
My 28-year-old borrowed gavel
If I’d trained as an auctioneer in London or New York, the bids department would have given me an official gavel. But I became an auctioneer in Geneva, a regional office. The team from London flew in twice a year, we held sales in a hotel because our office was too small – and there was no gavel for Rahul.
So I went to see François. He has a whole collection of gavels – ivory, wooden, resin – and even a gavel‑shaped cake a hotel gave him years ago that still hasn’t disintegrated. He’d had two wooden copies made of his favourite antique London gavel. I asked to borrow the darker one. He said okay. That was 28 years ago, and I never gave it back. Sometimes, if he forgets his, he borrows it from me – but it’s still my borrowed gavel.
Once, bringing the hammer down on a final lot, the gavel broke in my hand. The head flew off – I caught it mid-air – but I was devastated. This was my gavel; I’d already been using it for years. My pen had also exploded ink everywhere. I thought, "Oh no. What am I going to do?"
Our operations guy in Geneva, from Tunisia, came over and said, “Rahul, calm down. Give me the gavel, go wash your hands. When you come back, I’ll fix it.” He glued it back together. The gavel, which used to be perfectly straight, is now slightly crooked. I can’t unscrew it anymore, but it’s the only gavel I use – and only I know why it has that little angle.
Rahul Kadakia's collection of gavels
Christie's 2011 evening sale of Elizabeth Taylor's collection achieved $115.9 million, the most valuable jewellery auction at the time
A surprise lot
We held the Elizabeth Taylor jewellery sale in 2011. The room was packed with about 500 people and the bidding went wild. The first lot was estimated at $20,000 and made $300,000. There were 80 items, and it took almost five hours to sell them.
Before the sale, we had 100 limited-edition copies of a book Miss Taylor had written about her jewellery, signed before she passed away. Regular unsigned copies cost $250, but we offered the signed ones at $3,000 during the exhibition, with proceeds going to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.
I’d asked the trustees to hold back copy number one – not for me to keep, just to set aside during the sale. François took the rostrum for the first 40 lots, and I came in for the next 40. When we switched, I stepped up and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, before we get on to lot number 41, I have a surprise lot.”
Nobody knew what it was. The room was already in a frenzy, and by that point we were more than $60 million into an evening that would end at $115 million. In that atmosphere, you could sell anything.
We sold copy number one for $85,000 to a client who wanted it to sit beside the jewellery they’d just bought. All the money went to charity. It was a magical moment.
Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair with Jewelry, written by Elizabeth Taylor and published in 2002
My talismans
I wear my wedding band every day, along with a necklace of pendants for faith and luck. There’s an elephant from India – the god you pray to first when you’re doing something big in life. There’s also a Persian guardian angel I’ve worn since I was a boy. My grandfather did a lot of business with the Parsis – Persians who left Iran for India rather than convert to Islam. India has the world's largest Parsi population, and they were our main clientele at the store.
I wear a diamond because my mother told me, “You’re in the diamond business; you must wear a diamond.” All of this hangs on a simple black thread from a temple.
A deal on a napkin
In 2016, we sold the Oppenheimer Blue diamond for $58 million and set a world record. The seller had an office in our New York building; I went upstairs and looked at the stone. Normally a deal like that means lawyers and contracts going back and forth. But in this case – and this is very particular to the jewellery world – a handshake was as good as a contract.
The estimate was $35 million. They wanted 40, I wanted 30, and we settled at 35. We wrote the terms on a napkin. I said, “Are we good?” They said, “Looks good to us.” We shook hands, and they handed me the diamond. I put it in my pocket, took the elevator down to my office in the same building, and said to my team, “I think we have a nice diamond for the May sale.” They asked what it was. I said, “The Oppenheimer Blue, for $35 million.”
Oppenheimer Blue | Sold: CHF 56.8 million ($57.5 million), Christie's Geneva, 2016 | Auction record for a blue diamond
Christie’s New York at Rockefeller Center
An eye for treasure
In 1999, I was in Geneva, cutting through a mall to get a sandwich. There was an old jewellery shop owned by a grumpy man who never let anyone in. Everything was scattered in trays in the window. Inside was dark; he sat in the back, and you almost felt afraid to go in.
One day, as I walked past, something in one of the trays caught my eye: an old Indian seal, shaped like a pyramid, solid gold, set with rubies and emeralds. It had a loop for your finger and an Islamic family crest at the base – the kind used to press into hot wax for an embossed signature. I thought it looked interesting, so I went in and asked to see it.
The old man became suspicious. “Why would you want this thing?” I explained we had an Indian jewellery sale coming up in London – we’d started them in 1997 for the 50th anniversary of Indian independence. I knew I’d happily take it at £20,000 or £30,000, so I offered £10,000. He countered: “Twenty thousand, take it or leave it.” I said, “Okay, give it to me.”
That £20,000 seal, tossed in a tray like junk, ended up making three or four times that in the sale. If you keep your eyes open while walking around, life surprises you. I tell my kids not to be on their phones all the time.
Christie's held its first Indian jewellery sale in 1997
Christie’s Maharajas & Mughal Magnificence Sale achieved $109 million in 2019, the second-highest for a private jewellery collection sold at auction
The business has changed
In the old days, there was an auctioneer, a sale, and you had to be in the room to buy – maybe leaving a proxy bid. You just raised your hand; there weren’t even paddles. If you bought something, a porter would put it in front of you. At the end of the sale you might have six plates, one bench, one chest of drawers, and a clerk would add it up on a receipt and say, “That’s your bill.”
Today, billions of dollars’ worth of art and objects are sold at auction houses around the world through telephone bids and real-time online bidding. We used to sell everything and anything, but we no longer handle categories like stamps or coins – there are specialized houses for that. Contemporary and Impressionist art used to have separate sale weeks; now we have 20th- and 21st-century sales where you might see a Rothko one evening and a Van Gogh the next.
We also started private sales, which weren’t traditional auction‑house practice. A client can call and say, “It’s my 20th wedding anniversary, and I need a diamond now; I can’t wait for your next sale.” Within 48 hours, we find them a stone. The evolution will keep going – the question is always: what is it that we’re not doing yet?
Van Gogh's Les canots amarrés sold for HK$251 million ($32 million) at Christie's in 2024 | Auction record for the artist in Asia
Kadakia sold the Royal Blue for HK$125.4 million ($16 million) in 2025 | Auction record for a Kashmir sapphire necklace
Smarter buyers, scarcer works
Collectors have educated themselves tremendously over the years. If you're a stone collector, you learn: do I want a D‑colour diamond, or could I buy an H or I because it has a beautiful cut? If you're buying coloured gemstones, do I want a Colombian emerald, or is a fine Zambian emerald just as rare? A Kashmir sapphire, which is no longer produced, or a Ceylon sapphire?
It’s the same with signed jewellery. The golden age was the 1920s and 30s – Art Deco pieces from houses like Boucheron, Bulgari, Cartier, and Van Cleef & Arpels. They were making jewels you just don’t find anymore, and prices have gone up five, ten, twenty, even a hundred times.
When I joined Christie’s in 1996, our global jewellery sales were about $160 million. By 2016 – the peak at that time – we sold over $700 million; last year we still did close to $500 million. Works have become scarcer, there are more buyers, more money, and much more knowledge. If you have the supply, you can find buyers all around the world.
Look at Salvator Mundi selling for $450 million. When we sold Van Gogh’s Sunflowers back then, it felt like an extraordinary price. I wasn’t there yet, but a colleague who’s been at Christie’s for nearly 50 years – Nick Finch, the gentleman with the white beard you see to the right of the auctioneer at big sales – told me the London office was so thrilled they gave every employee £100 as a thank you. If that Sunflowers came back today, it would make about $250 million.
Van Gogh's Sunflowers sold for £24.7 million at Christie's London in 1987, becoming the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction at the time
"We’re the best, but not the only one”
When the market is strong, everything feels easy – anything you put up for sale sells. The real test comes when it isn’t: when you’re not finding jewellery, not selling it, or there are bigger sales at the competition.
Those are the moments when you have to make hard decisions. Do you need to downsize? A smaller team, or bigger? The key is to keep things as stable as possible so your team always feels level.
It’s a tough business. We’re the best auction house in the world, but we’re not the only one. People have a choice. There are times when other houses will price works at levels that don’t make sense. They may not sell it because it’s too aggressive, but you still lose the business.
That’s the dilemma: do you push estimates high enough to win the consignment, but risk not selling it? Where do you walk away? Most of the time we go after the business that’s offered to us because of our team, our reputation, and our results. But sometimes you have to be pragmatic and say, “We simply can’t do it.”
A happy Monday morning
The APAC region is very stable and efficient. Collectors here have a real appetite for the best. It doesn’t have to be the most expensive, but they want the absolute best in its category.
I want to support my colleagues and build on what we already have here – the exceptional team and a beautiful 50,000‑square‑foot office at The Henderson. You don’t come in and suddenly change everything. For now, I want to watch – to understand market and collectors’ sentiment.
My goal is a happy Monday morning. Everyone loves Friday. But on Monday, are you happy to run back to work? I can’t wait. By Sunday at four in the afternoon, I’m already itching to get to the office, and I want everyone to feel that. You should be excited to see your colleagues, talk to clients, look at the works you’re lining up for the season.
If you have that energy, people feel it – your clients feel it. When I’m pitching, I ask, “Are you feeling excited with me in the room right now?” They say yes. I tell them, “Imagine what I can do when I have your property for sale.” That’s the goal: make people happy to come to work, offer the best works of art, and make collectors see Christie’s as the premier destination for art in the world.