Pace’s Missing Accounts Finally Land, Ten Months Late. What Do They Say?

Pace Gallery Limited filed its 2024 accounts with Companies House on 21 October 2026, almost ten months after they were due. They show a steep drop in turnover, but a result close to breaking even. 

Five days later, Pace filed its 2025 accounts, which show that the group’s pre-tax loss had grown to $5.5m on turnover of $65.9m.

The filings cover Pace Gallery Limited and its subsidiaries in Europe and Asia, but exclude the gallery’s US business and Tokyo operation. They therefore give only a partial picture of Pace’s global business. 

The UK company is the holding company for operations outside the US and Tokyo, including London, Geneva, Seoul and Beijing, and, until 2025, Hong Kong. It is owned by The Pace Gallery LLC in New York, which is controlled by chief executive Marc Glimcher and supported by him and his father, Arne.

Turnover: down $37.2m

Galleries sell in two ways. Work on consignment remains the artist’s or owner’s property, and only the gallery’s commission counts as turnover. Work the gallery owns outright is recorded at its full sale price. The same painting can therefore add its whole price to the figure or only a fraction of it, depending on how it was sold.

Pace’s UK group turned over $67.7m in 2024, against $104.9m the year before: $37.2m less, a fall of 35.5 percent. The group reportedly recorded a pre-tax loss of $2,429 in 2024, according to reports in The Art Newspaper and Artnet News. 

In 2023, it made a pre-tax profit of $6.8m. The 2024 result is arguably the most striking figure in the accounts: against $67.7m in turnover, the group ended the year just $2,429 short. It is as close to break-even as the figures get.

Pace is not alone. Hauser & Wirth’s UK company saw turnover fall from £143.9 million in 2023 to £68.3m in 2024, while its pre-tax profit fell 87 percent to £1.16m. The gallery attributed the decline to weaker secondary-market sales. David Zwirner’s UK company also reported a sharp fall: its after-tax profit dropped from £2.5m to £41,180 as turnover declined. These comparisons are indicative rather than like-for-like: Pace’s figures cover a consolidated group operating in Europe and Asia and are reported in dollars; the other figures are for UK companies and are reported in pounds. Zwirner’s figure is after tax, while Hauser & Wirth’s and Pace’s are pre-tax.

Revenue fell by $37.2m, while costs fell by $30.4m. Almost all of that reduction came from the cost of sales – what Pace pays artists and consignors – which fell as sales declined. Its fixed costs went the other way: average staff numbers rose from 53 to 58.

Pace Gallery, New York. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.

The balance sheet: thin

Net assets are what remains after a company’s liabilities are deducted from its assets. Pace’s UK group ended 2024 with $2.5m in net assets, down from $4.5m.

It also reported $49m in debts and other amounts falling due within one year, compared with $50.8m in 2023. In a good year, sales cover the rest. After a year like 2024, the margin is uncomfortable, and the group’s reliance on support from New York matters. The directors say the UK operation depends on financial support from the US parent. The parent, together with Marc and Arne Glimcher, has assured the directors it will not seek repayment for at least 12 months from the date the accounts were approved, unless third-party liabilities have been met.

The debt swap: what it is, and what it isn’t

At the end of 2024, the consolidated group owed its US parent $9.4m, down from $17.3m a year earlier. At company level, excluding its subsidiaries, the amount owed was $19.2m. It is this larger sum the parent intends to convert into shares by the end of 2026.

In simple terms, New York lent the UK company money. The proposed conversion would cancel that debt in exchange for new shares. The US parent already owns the business outright, and there is a single £1 share in issue, so the transaction would not change ownership; it would change how the money is classified. Essentially, what was a debt to be repaid becomes an investment that stays put.

A spokesperson told The Art Newspaper the move should not be read as a loss or liquidity issue for the UK business. They described it as a capital-structure decision, saying the parent considers part of its investment ‘more appropriately reflected as equity rather than intercompany debt’. The share issuance, they said, would make no material difference to how the UK group runs.

Former gas station turned arts space housing Pace Gallery and Galerie Judin. Courtesy Pace Gallery and Galerie Judin.

What came after

Because the accounts arrived so late, the restructuring they describe had already taken place by the time they were filed. In May 2026, chief executive Marc Glimcher told The New York Times that Pace planned to cut 50 artists from its roster and 50 jobs. Hong Kong closed in October 2025. In June 2026, Hanover Square went on the rental market. Pace said it wanted a ‘less corporate’ London space and planned to move to a smaller location on nearby Grafton Street; by late October, it had given no further update. The gallery is also seeking a tenant for part of its eight-storey New York headquarters.

The filings record $1m in severance paid to one departing member of management, whom the gallery did not name.

Money went out in the other direction too. Galleries often pay artists in advance: money handed over before any work has sold and recouped later from the sale price. Pace held $5.7m in such advances at the end of 2024, nearly double the $2.9m a year earlier. The accounts say $306,235 was written down as irrecoverable.

The 2025 accounts describe the new Berlin gallery, opened in 2025, as a ‘counter-cyclical investment’ and a foothold in Europe. They also refer to Pace Di Donna Schrader Galleries, a secondary-market venture with Emmanuel Di Donna and David Schrader. Announced in December 2025, it began operating in 2026.

In an interview with The Appraisal, Glimcher said that by early 2026 Pace had concluded it needed ‘real change in the structure of the business’. He cited interest rates, shipping and crating costs, global instability and the loss of the US 1031 exchange for art. Before a 2017 change in US tax law, the provision allowed art and other personal property to qualify for like-kind exchanges that deferred tax on gains. From 2018, it generally applied only to real property.

The directors’ report concludes that they have a ‘strong belief in the future of the company and group’.