As the high-flying art market has contracted, the company is looking elsewhere, expanding its luxury brand and real estate in New York, Paris and Hong Kong.
Sotheby’s laid off more than 100 staff members around the globe this week, roughly 6 percent of its 1,800-person work force. The cutbacks, which came three weeks after the auction house’s major November sales, were part of an effort to improve the company’s financial picture amid shrinking auction revenue. They came despite a recent $1 billion cash infusion from Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and investment company, ADQ.
“Given the challenges the market has faced this year, we’ve taken a careful look at our business and staffing levels to perform well and grow going forward,” Karina Sokolovsky, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman, said in a statement Thursday.
The layoffs, which Puck first reported Tuesday, affected people at all levels of the company, including junior employees, client services executives, back-office support staff and long-serving specialists. Sotheby’s also closed regional offices in Moscow and Bangkok. No previously scheduled sales have been canceled as a result of the cutbacks, Ms. Sokolovsky said.
The once high-flying art market has contracted over the past two years amid rising interest rates, a volatile Chinese economy and a shrinking supply of top-quality artworks. Sotheby’s reported $2.3 billion in auction sales in the first half of the year, down 25 percent from 2023. (Its rival, Christie’s, reported a 22 percent decline in the first half of 2024; a Christie’s spokeswoman said it “presently has no staffing changes of note planned.”)
Last month, Sotheby’s marquee art auctions in New York delivered $533 million, a more than 50 percent drop from 2023, according to the art-market analytics company Pi-eX.
Some staff members were notified last week that their jobs would be eliminated; conversations are continuing this week as some employees negotiate transitions into advisory roles. In New York on Tuesday, the human resources staff summoned individuals one by one to deliver the news. (The next day, Sotheby’s chief executive, Charles F. Stewart, posted a carousel of images of himself on Instagram from his recent trip to Abu Dhabi, irritating employees and concerned clients. Stewart, who was in the United Arab Emirates to attend a financial conference, returned to New York on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson.)
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