After fashion, also art. After all, it is always about luxury and it could only end up in the hands of the French. The 2,7 billion dollar operation that brought the prestigious Sotheby's auction house into the hands of the transalpine entrepreneur Patrick Drahi is not only yet another sign of the gold fever that has infected the art market, but also the beginning of a new era that will mark a derby across the Alps with the rival house, Christie's, long owned by luxury king Francois Pinault, among the richest men on the planet. To buy Sotheby's, the French telecommunications tycoon, which owns the telephone operator Sfr at home (and also several newspapers, including the left-leaning newspaper Libération) and in the US CableVision, offered 57 dollars per share, 61% more than the last Friday's listing of the auction house on Wall Street.
The operation is therefore worth 2,7 billion dollars, which rises to 3,7 if one also includes one billion of the company's debts. The acquisition, completely unexpected and built behind the scenes, also scores Sotheby's farewell to Wall Street after 31 years. A farewell that will obviously do good for the auction house, which in the last year has lost 40% of its value on the stock exchange, even if it comes from a period of recovery in the business, with 5,2 billion in sales in 2018, but always distanced from Christie's which has made auctions of up to 7 billion dollars and in 2017 made the coup of the century, or the auction of the Salvator Mundi awarded for 450,3 million dollars.
For his part in recent years Sotheby's has had some record sales, such as the “Nu couché” (on the left side) by Amedeo Modigliani (157,2 million dollars) and the “Meules” by Claude Monet (110,7 million). Among the most famous objects and paintings sold by the auction house founded in 1744 by the British entrepreneur Samuel Maker are the art collection of the Duchess of Windsor, the personal collection of Andy Warhol and in 2012 "The Scream" by Edvard Munch . A few months ago there was also the controversial performance of street artist Banksy who created a painting that self-destructed in front of the public in London.
Drahi in France he is considered a controversial financier, as also noted by the financial newspaper Les Echos, which calls him "the debt collector". The company through which he controls his media empire is called Altice and today has almost 50 billion euros in debt. It is by selling part of the shares of the Altice USA subsidiary, for a value of 400 million, that Drahi will finance the operation, a large part of which, however, will be paid personally. thanks to a credit line opened with Bnp Paribas. Drahi, on the other hand, ruled out selling a stake in Altice Europe, which yields him 60% of the group's total turnover.
Now the derby with Pinault, owner of the luxury giant Kering (ex PPR), is launched. And it will open up many avenues for Drahi, as happened in the past to those who attempted an adventure in the art world. Pinault himself, always remembering Les Echos, he only got into luxury after he got his hands on Christie's. And Alfred Taubman, who in turn took over Sotheby's in 1983, “later did great business with the Rockefeller and Rothschild families”. In short, art will open up a world to Drahi. But what will become of Sotheby's with such an unscrupulous new owner?
