Who Owns Sotheby's?

Bookseller Samuel Baker held the first Sotheby's auction in London on March 11, 1744, dispersing a collection of rare books. The firm passed through the Baker family, taking its name from Baker's nephew John Sotheby, and spent its first century and a half selling libraries, manuscripts, and prints, including the collections of Napoleon.

The modern auction house emerged under Peter Wilson, chairman from 1937, who moved Sotheby's into fine art just as the postwar art market exploded. It opened in New York in 1955, acquired American house Parke-Bernet in 1964, and by the 1970s was selling the landmark Impressionist and modern collections that defined the top of the market.

American shopping mall magnate A. Alfred Taubman acquired control in 1983 and floated Sotheby's on the NYSE in 1988 under the ticker BID. The public era included the industry's greatest scandal: a price-fixing conspiracy with Christie's that broke in 2000, ending in Taubman's prison sentence, a guilty plea for the company, and a $512 million civil settlement.

Activist investors pressured the house through the 2010s, including a public battle with Third Point's Dan Loeb, before Drahi's 2019 buyout. Under private ownership Sotheby's pushed beyond art into luxury retail, watches, jewelry, handbags, cars, and wine, expanded online-only sales, and entered the Middle East. It bought the landmark Breuer Building at 945 Madison Avenue for about $100 million and opened it as global headquarters on November 8, 2025.

Results swung with the market: a $248 million pre-tax loss in the weak 2024 market turned to a $53 million pre-tax profit in 2025 on consolidated sales of $7.1 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $363 million. An $825 million bond issue in April 2026 refinanced debt coming due in 2027.