After leaving Sotheby's Australia, Stait joined Martin Browne Contemporary, in Sydney's Paddington, from which she has recently left.
Goodman told Terry Ingram of the Australian Art Sales Digest that after a longer than anticipated two years, his project Fine Art Bourse (FAB), was about to proceed with the backing of ChinaEquity Group. On its website, ChinaEquity clains to be China's leading private merchant bank.
The operation was being undertaken through a Hong Kong registered company.
Its focus was high end jewellery and art.
He expected the company's plans to unfold within the next two months with details of a distinctive new approach to Internet auctioneering to be announced by then. He was not prepared to divulge details of what these were at present but they would involve a lower buyers premium of 5 per cent.
The present business models of internet auction operators was flawed, he added. FAB would provide an alternative model, even to existing operators.
He claimed to have the backing of Chinese fund managers and Bill Moss, formerly with Macquarie Bank.
At the age of 61, London had given him a new zest for life. It was buzzing financially and in art activity. He had been surprised to find how enthusiastically younger IT types had responded to his ideas despite the age gap.
He wanted to point out that he had been the first to take a live Internet bid at an art auction in Australia in theearly 2000s.
After a long, if at one time bumpy, career as an independent auctioneer of fine art and jewellery, which will be the focus of the new operation, Goodman, briefly held the franchise for Sotheby's in Australia.
He sold this on to local management headed by former National Gallery of Victoria curator Geoffrey Smith, its art specialist.
He had a long dalliance with Bonhams as a shareholder until Bonhams reminded him that Sotheby's was a brand with which London's Bonhams vigorously competed against around the world.
Goodman left the Australian auction scene which he found had become small, tired and repetitive and said he had no regrets.
He has taken on Jan Atkinson ex Bonhams in London as his finance director.
The new home, Finsbury Park, is an important outer London suburban transport junction and the home of the famous Finsbury Park Empire where some of the world's greatest vaudeville acts were performed.
