Pursuits
Sotheby's Sells $1.1 Billion of Art as Shares Sink on Guarantees
- Auctioneer won't recoup $515 million guarantee until 2016
- Sales set records for Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, Mike Kelley
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Sotheby’s sold $1.1 billion of art in its largest ever semiannual auction season, boosted by billionaire money manager Steven A. Cohen’s Andy Warhol painting and the estate of its former chairman.
The results came at a cost. The auction house issued the biggest single guarantee of $515 million to win the art trove of A. Alfred Taubman, who died in April. Sotheby’s said on Nov. 9 that it won’t know if the collection was profitable until 2016, cutting its fourth-quarter outlook. The stock dropped 16 percent this week before rising 4.8 percent at 10:40 a.m. in New York trading.