Though arch-rival Christie’s soundly beat Sotheby’s in 2013 auction sales by a hefty margin, $5.9 billion to $5.1 billion, the publicly traded firm broke the billion dollar mark in private sales for the first time, according to year-end figures released today.
In that fiercely competed for and booming private sales arena, Sotheby’s tallied $1.18 billion, representing a 30 percent jump from 2012 and just missed tying market leader Christie’s $1.19 billion total for the year.
For Sotheby’s, traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BID, the consolidated figure of $6.3 billion for auction room and private sales is the highest in the firm’s long history.
An unspecified number of those private transactions in categories ranging from Impressionist/Modern and Contemporary Art to jewelry exceeded $50 million and of those, one exceeded the auction price achieved for Andy Warhol’s “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” from 1963 that fetched a record $105.3 million last November and represented the highest price for any work sold at auction by the firm in 2013.
A spokesperson for Sotheby’s declined to identify any of the private sale transactions, either by artist name or category, taking on the persona of a private dealer where confidentiality is usually the buzz word.
Sotheby’s did say that the number of clients who purchased works privately from the firm in 2013 increased 18 percent.
To understand just how far private sales have grown, Sotheby’s recorded $271.9 million in sales in 2005 and $906.5 million in 2012.
Sotheby’s net income for the 12 months ending December 31, 2013 came in at $130 million, up 20 percent from the $108.3 million result netted in 2012. (Christie’s, which is privately held, doesn’t release profit and loss figures.)
Sotheby’s, like Christie’s, has recently added considerable infrastructure to its private sales arm, including the opening last year of S/2 on St. George Street in London, the firm’s moniker for its private gallery operations devoted to contemporary art.
That posh space, across the street from the rear entrance of Sotheby’s London headquarters, debuted just ahead of Frieze week in October with the crisply curated “Joseph Beuys Revealed” exhibition.
Sotheby’s also hired Nanne Dekking at that same time as worldwide head of private sales to lead a growing team in the U.S. and Europe.
Dekking, a well-connected and former rainmaker for the Wildenstein Galleries in New York for 11 years, adds a decidedly sophisticated and non-auction house layer to the organization, which has been under extreme pressure by outside investors to increase profitability, especially from hedge fund mogul Daniel Loeb of Third Point, who is actively trying to shift the power on Sotheby's board.
According to a Sotheby’s statement released at the time of his hire, Dekking “discreetly executed some of the most significant private transitions in the marketplace.”
Reached by email, Dekking said, “The challenge and opportunity represented by my new role at Sotheby’s is to utilize the assets of the auction house while operating a private sale business as though it is a private family business, with the utmost focus on confidentiality and discretion.”
In that vein, Dekking declined to comment on what percentage contemporary art sales contributed to the latest private sales figures but revealed that the category has quadrupled in sales since 2010 and recorded 251 private sales in 2013.
Sotheby’s lost Stephane Connery, the firm’s former director of world wide sales and its top private sales’ player in 2012, when he left the company to form the elite art advisory start-up Connery Pissarro Seydoux.
The S/2 enterprise is part of Sotheby’s private selling machine and in 2013, staged some 27 selling exhibitions in six venues, including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as New York and London.
Again, precise figures and breakdowns of specific shows were not easily available, though the eerily lit and elaborately installed “Les Lalanne: The Poetry of Sculpture” exhibition of bronze animals and furniture by Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne at S/2 in New York last fall co-curated by Chelsea dealer Paul Kasmin and collector/real estate developer Paul Shvo, had some transparency, thanks to Kasmin.
“They made plenty of sales in the $200,000-400,000 range,” said Kasmin, “and one piece sold in the million dollar range. It was very lively.”
Sotheby’s claims that unlike the unspoken code of many private dealerships, it clearly discloses what commission rates clients have to pay for private transactions.
“For us,” said a spokesperson, “we agree up front what our take is and it’s capped. The seller is always informed of exactly what Sotheby’s will be taking as a commission.”
