The fate of Kruse International likely will be revealed Thursday when a major auto auction company makes an announcement in Auburn.

Last week, an employee of RM Auctions filed articles of incorporation with the Indiana Secretary of State’s office, effectively allowing the company to do business in the state, under the name Auctions America by RM.

Wednesday afternoon, RM Auctions said its founder and chairman, Rob Myers, would conduct a news conference Thursday in Auburn for “an important announcement for the collector car community and the state of Indiana.”

Kruse International president Dean Kruse has said in published reports in recent weeks that he was entertaining offers to sell his auction park south of Auburn and that a decision was imminent.

An RM Auctions spokeswoman declined to comment Wednesday about the nature of the news conference. Calls to Kruse were not returned.

Myers launched a single-car garage restoration business in Canada in 1976 and formed RM Auctions in 1991, according to the company. The company now calls itself “the world’s largest auction house for quality automobiles.”

In May, the Indiana Auctioneer Commission, responding to 70 complaints filed against Kruse by the state’s attorney general, yanked Dean Kruse’s personal license as well as that of his auction house. That put the company’s hallmark sale, its Labor Day auction in Auburn, in jeopardy.

aturner@jg.net