as nyse bid industry auctioneering specialty retail founded london united kingdom 11 march 1744 1744 03 11 founder samuel baker george leigh and john sotheby headquarters 1334 york avenue new york city 1 usa number of locations 90 locations as of 2012 area served 40 countries worldwide key people domenico de sole chairman tad smith president and ceo william s. sheridan cfo and executive vp products fine arts books revenue us 853.678 million 2013 2 operating income us 222.575 million 2013 2 profit us 130.006 million 2013 2 total assets us 2.893 billion 2013 2 total equity us 1.139 billion 2013 2 number of employees 1 577 dec 2013 2 divisions sotheby s new york sotheby s london sotheby s hong kong sotheby s moscow subsidiaries sotheby s international realty sotheby s diamonds sotheby s institute of art sotheby s wine sotheby s art storage facility website www.sothebys.com sotheby s is a british multinational corporation headquartered in new york city . one of the world s largest brokers of fine and decorative art jewelry real estate and collectibles sotheby s operation is divided into three segments auction finance and dealer . the company s services range from corporate art services to private sales . sotheby s is the world s fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation with 90 locations in 40 countries . as of december 2011 the company had 1 446 employees worldwide . it is the world s largest art business with global sales in 2011 totalling 5.8 billion . 3 sotheby s was established on 11 march 1744 in london . the american holding company was initially incorporated in august 1983 in michigan . in june 2006 sotheby s holdings inc. reincorporated in the state of delaware and was renamed sotheby s. 4 in july 2016 chinese insurance giant taikang life became sotheby s largest shareholder . 5 contents 1 history 1.1 beginnings 1.2 public company 1.3 2010s 2 auction process 2.1 buying 2.2 selling 3 service categories 3.1 private sales 3.2 sotheby s financial services 3.3 corporate art services 3.4 icollect 3.5 sotheby s picture library 3.6 museum services 3.7 sotheby s caf 3.8 sotheby s fine art storage facility 3.9 tax & heritage 3.10 trusts & estates 3.11 valuations 3.12 other services 4 art departments 5 auctioned artwork 6 controversies 6.1 price fixing scandal 6.2 illegal antiquities 6.3 auctions and artists authorship rights 7 activist investors 7.1 24 april 2014 iss recommendation 7.2 july 2016 china s taikang life insurance became the largest shareholder 8 see also 9 notes 10 further reading 11 external links history edit beginnings edit a book sale in progress at messrs sotheby wilkinson & hodge of wellington street 1888 . sotheby s predecessor baker and leigh was founded in london on 11 march 1744 6 when samuel baker presided over the disposal of several hundred scarce and valuable books from the library of rt hon sir john stanley bt . of alderley . three swedish auction houses are even older stockholms auktionsverk g teborgs auktionsverk sv uppsala auktionskammare sv and sotheby s great rival in london and then new york christie s dates from 1759 or shortly after . 7 the current business dates back to 1804 when two of the partners of the original business leigh and sotheby left to set up their own book dealership . the library napoleon took with him into exile at st helena as well as the library collections of john wilkes benjamin heywood bright and the dukes of devonshire and of buckingham both related to george leigh 8 were sold through samuel baker s auctions . 9 after baker s death in 1778 his estate was divided between leigh and john sotheby . george leigh died unmarried in 1816 10 but not before endeavouring to secure his succession by recruiting samuel e leigh into the business . under the sotheby family the auction house extended its activities to auctioning prints medals and coins . 11 john wilkinson sotheby s senior accountant became the company s new ceo . 12 the business did not seek to auction fine arts in general until much later their first major success in this field being the sale of a frans hals painting for nine thousand guineas as late as 1913 . in 1917 sotheby s relocated from 13 wellington street to 34 35 new bond street which remains as its london base to this day . 13 they soon came to rival christie s as leaders of the london auction market which had become the most important for art . in 1955 sotheby s opened an office at bowling green new york city . in 1964 sotheby s purchased parke bernet then the largest auctioneer of fine art in the united states . in the following year sotheby s moved to 980 madison avenue new york . with international popularity of fine art auction growing sotheby s opened offices in paris and los angeles in 1967 became the first auction house to operate in hong kong in 1973 and moscow in 1988 . 14 public company edit york avenue headquarters new york city . sotheby s became a u.k. public company in 1977 . a 25 percent drop from the 1980 81 record of 610 million in sales 15 contributed to sotheby s decision to relocate its north american headquarters from madison avenue to a former cigar factory 16 at 1334 york avenue new york in 1982 . the auction house closed its madison avenue galleries at east 76th street . the los angeles galleries were sold and auctions of west coast material moved to new york . 17 in the following year a group of investors such as american millionaire alfred taubman purchased and privatized sotheby s. sotheby s was initially incorporated as sotheby s holdings inc. in michigan in august 1983 . 4 taubman took sotheby s public in 1988 listing the company s shares on the new york stock exchange making sotheby s the oldest publicly traded company on the nyse under the ticker symbol bid . 18 in june 2006 sotheby s holdings inc. reincorporated in the state of delaware and was renamed sotheby s shortly after . with private transactions constituting an essential and increasingly profitable business segment through the years sotheby s has bought art galleries and helped dealers finance purchases . it has also gone into partnership with dealers on private sales . 19 in 1990 sotheby s teamed up with dealer william acquavella to form acquavella modern art a nevada general partnership 20 and a subsidiary of sotheby s holding company . the subsidiary paid 143 million for the contents of the pierre matisse gallery in manhattan which included about 2 300 works by such artists as mir jean dubuffet alberto giacometti and marc chagall and began selling the works both at auction and privately . 21 in 1996 sotheby s acquired andre emmerich gallery to operate a division called emmerich sotheby s 21 and in 1997 it purchased a 50 % interest in deitch projects . 22 as a consequence the josef and anni albers foundation the main beneficiary of the artists estates as well as the estates of morris louis and milton avery announced that they would not renew their emmerich contracts . 23 that decision came right after it was disclosed that sotheby s had decided to close emmerich s prime space at 41 east 57th street and that its artists would be handled out of deitch projects . 24 sotheby s subsequently closed andre emmerich in 1998 and later sold its share in deitch projects back to jeffrey deitch . in 2006 sotheby s acquired a dutch dealership noortman master paintings from its owner robert noortman for 82.5 million 56.5 million worth of sotheby s stock and assumption of more than 26 million in gallery debt including 11.7 million owed to the auction house . 22 25 sothebys and noortman had collaborated before in 1995 when the sales of dutch plastic millionaire joost ritman were divided between the two companies . 26 already in 1990 sotheby s new york had successfully lobbied for a zoning change permitting the construction of a 27 story residential tower above the five story headquarters ; this expansion was never realised . instead sotheby s throughout the 1990s expressed interest in sites that ranged from the old alexander s building on east 59th street to the new york coliseum site on columbus circle and was even considering moving into the old b. altman building on fifth avenue . 27 the company eventually bought its york avenue building for 11 million in 2000 and completed a 140 million expansion and renovation in 2001 16 adding six floors and 240 000 square feet . the renovation added the capability to store works on the same premises as the specialist departments galleries and auction spaces . sotheby s new york s offices also house sotheby s wine and the former bid an american contemporary restaurant and later bistro which was closed due to poor attendance . 28 the company sold the building in 2002 for 175 million . 16 in may 2007 sotheby s opened an office in moscow in response to rapidly growing interest among russian buyers in the international art market and held sales in qatar in 2009 . 29 sotheby s office on new bond street london . as many industries took a blow from the economic crisis of 2008 the art market also saw a contraction . in international figures art prices fell by 7.5 % in q1 of 2008 in comparison to the previous quarter . in september and october 2008 major auction houses saw a sharp decline in sales artprice.com the world leader in art market information coined the term black october . sotheby s bought in rate was 27 % christie s was 45 % and phillips de pury s was 46 % . however the total values of global and united states fine art auction sales were usd 8.3 billion and usd 2.9 billion respectively . 30 in 2009 art collector steven a. cohen built a 6 percent stake in the auction house for his hedge fund sac capital advisors . 31 2010s edit as of 2012 the firm has an annual revenue of approximately us 831.8 million 32 and offices on manhattan s york avenue and london s new bond street . this position has been achieved through natural growth acquisitions most notably the 1964 purchase of the united states largest auctioneer of fine art parke bernet and management during the cyclical art recessions of the 20th century . citation needed in 2011 noortman s amsterdam space was closed and the gallery moved to london . 33 34 two years later sotheby s closed noortmans after having written down 8.3 million of inventory and started selling off lower valued works of art through other auction houses . 33 as of 2011 sotheby s is present in over 90 locations in 40 countries with ten salesrooms . 35 in 2012 the company signed a 10 year joint venture agreement to form sotheby s beijing auction co. ltd. the first international auction house in china ; under the agreement it invested 1.2 million to take an 80 percent stake in the venture with state owned beijing gehua cultural development group . 36 sotheby s shares a rivalry christie s for the position of the world s preeminent fine art auctioneer a title of much subjectivity . in august 2004 sotheby s introduced an online system mysotheby s allowing clients to track lots and create wishlists that could be automatically updated as new works became available . sotheby s also created the bidnow service which allows bidders to bid real time online while watching the broadcast auctions with the exception of wine auctions . livebid is sotheby s online bidding system exclusively for wine auctions . 37 in the meantime income from classic auctioneering has fallen