Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Christie’s International raised 19 million Swiss francs ($19 million) in the biggest watch auction this year, including a collection of 10 Patek Philippe watches for almost double the low estimate.

Nine of the top 10 lots were Patek Philippe, and one was Rolex, in the auction that took place yesterday in Geneva, the London-based auctioneer said in an e-mailed statement today. The entire sale was expected to raise 10 million francs to 15 million francs, Christie’s had estimated.

The most expensive timepiece was a Patek Philippe 18-carat gold watch with a calendar that adjusts for leap years, sold for 2.4 million francs to a Swiss museum, Christie’s said. The collection of Pateks sold for 5.8 million francs, beating the 3 million franc to 4 million franc estimate.

Watch auctions have been successful even as Swiss watchmakers suffer from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Rare pieces continue to attract more demand than newly made watches, as Swiss watch exports have dropped 26 percent in the first nine months of this year in value.

A Sotheby’s auction of timepieces in the same Swiss city on Nov. 15 raised 5.1 million francs, within the auctioneer’s estimated range of 4.15 million francs to 5.71 million francs.

Porsche Watches

The family that controls Porsche SE, the maker of the 911 sports car, is selling watches from its private collection at a charity auction in London next month.

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche and his sons have entered 49 watches into a sale to be held by Bonhams on Dec. 2.

The group, which includes examples by Eterna, Porsche Design, Rolex, Panerai, Jaeger LeCoultre, Breitling and Omega, is expected to fetch 100,000 pounds.

Proceeds will be donated to the oncology research department of the Robert Bosch Hospital, Stuttgart, Germany, said Bonhams.

“We’ve already had a lot of responses from car collectors,” Paul Maudsley, head of Bonhams’ watch department, said in an interview.

“Anyone who likes watches, likes cars, and anyone who likes cars, likes watches,” said Maudsley, who himself owns a Porsche.

Hirst Charity

Artworks designed by Damien Hirst, Marc Jacobs and Annie Leibovitz are set to raise as much as 225,000 pounds ($379,000) today for the Red Cross campaign to fight malnutrition in Niger.

The three designs, offered with their original drawings, will be auctioned for Louis Vuitton at a private dinner for 100 guests hosted by Sotheby’s in London.

Other designs being sold in the same auction were created by musician and composer Gustavo Santaolalla, chef Ferran Adria and Patrick-Louis Vuitton, head of the brand’s Special Orders.

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, the world’s largest maker of luxury goods, said the items had been crafted at Vuitton’s first workshop at Asnieres, France, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Red Cross.

Hirst came up with a portable butterfly-decorated cabinet containing drawers for surgical instruments. The black leather case is expected to fetch as much as 80,000 pounds, said Sotheby’s.

Fashion designer Jacobs contributed a monogrammed leather and brass traveling home for his bull terriers, Daisy and Alfred, complete with a signed personalized dog cushion. This is valued at 25,000 pounds to 35,000 pounds, while Leibovitz’s design for a photographer’s backpack has an estimate of 15,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds.

Art Fund

A new art investment vehicle, combining a fund of funds with direct purchases of artworks, aims to achieve an annual growth rate of 15 percent.

Emotional Assets Management & Research LLP will close its offering to investors on April 30, 2010, Bernard Duffy, managing director of the Guernsey-based company, said in an interview.

Sixty percent of the assets of the five-year vehicle will be allocated to a fund of funds; 40 percent to direct holdings of artworks from a basket of 15 collecting categories including paintings, photography, stamps, coins, diamonds and musical instruments. EAF will charge a management fee of 1 percent on the fund of funds, plus a 10 percent performance fee. The direct holdings will levy management and performance fees of 2 percent and 15 percent respectively.

The fund is advised by London-based dealer James Hyman, a trader in modern and contemporary art and photography, and Rabih Hage, a specialist in design. The minimum commitment for investors is 100,000 pounds.

Asset Flight

“The outlook for paper assets isn’t that good,” said Irish-born Duffy, a former head of the North American Equity desk at County Natwest. “The flight to tangible assets will take everyone by surprise over the next couple of years.”

The fund was aiming for an initial capitalization of 50 million pounds to 75 million pounds, said Duffy.

Price declines of as much as 50 percent for some categories of art and other regularly auctioned assets during the financial crisis have made wealthy individuals reluctant to invest in structured funds in the U.S. and Europe.

The London-based Fine Art Fund began taking commitments in 2004 and has $100 million under management. Castlestone Management’s Collection of Modern Art has $28 million under management.

“I’m not aware of much else beyond $10 million,” said Philip Hoffman, chief executive of the Fine Art Fund. “It’s a pretty lonely existence out there.”.

Christie’s International this year abandoned plans to set up an art-investment fund with a projected value of $250 million to $350 million, according to people involved with the project.

YSL Sale

The first session of Christie’s International’s four-day sale of the remaining collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge raised 2.2 million euros ($3.3 million) today in Paris.

The auction, held in collaboration with Pierre Berge and Associates in the Theatre Marigny, found buyers for 95 percent of the day’s 307 lots. The top price was the 82,600 euros achieved for a matched pair of late-19th-century gilded-metal- and-enamel 12-light chandeliers attributed to Ferdinand Barbedienne.

These had been expected to fetch between 10,000 euros and 15,000 euros. The first two days of Christie’s YSL II sale consist of furniture and works of art removed from Chateau Gabriel, the couple’s Proustian coastal retreat near Deauville in Normandy.

The last two days will include remaining items from their apartments in Paris not offered in the record-breaking 342.5 million-euro Part I auction in February.

The 1,180-lot sale, which ends on Nov. 20, carries an official low estimate of 3 million euros. Proceeds from the auction will benefit Saint Laurent and Berge’s charity devoted to research on HIV and AIDS.

To contact the writers on the story: Thomas Mulier in Geneva at tmulier@bloomberg.net; Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.

Last Updated: November 17, 2009 13:10 EST