On Monday, reporter Sam Knight gave Sotheby’s, and billionaire owner Patrick Drahi, the New Yorker treatment. While the nearly 12,000-word profile covers a lot of ground, one of the most explosive bits comes about two-thirds of the way through, during the recounting of, what else: Sotheby’s disastrous attempt last year to overhaul its fee structure.
Announced in February 2024, and enacted that May, the plan originally called for standardizing the seller’s commission rate—capped at ten percent on the first $500,000 of a lot’s hammer price, and waived for lots with low estimates above $5 million. Buyer’s premium under those terms was 20 percent of the hammer price for works up to $6 million, above which the rate lowered to ten percent.
Last December, however, the auction house reversed course, conceding that the effort to “create transparency, simplicity, and fairness on fees” ended up driving away business.
In the New Yorker piece, Knight spoke with dozens of current and former Sotheby’s employees, who said that the fee debacle were the nadir of Drahi’s ownership, likening it to Trump’s obsession with tariffs and trade disputes.
“It has huge parallels to the way Trump rules in the United States. It’s that kind of chaos that is totally not necessary,” a former executive told the New Yorker. “It’s, like, why did you do that?”
One Sotheby’s employee went so far as to describe the six months of the new fee structure—when Sotheby’s profits plummeted—as “Shakespearean.”
Knight further reports that the house’s chairmen lobbied Drahi directly in June 2024 to reverse the new fees, with Grégoire Billaut, chairman of contemporary art, reportedly telling Drahi, “You need to do something.” Billaut went on, “I’m losing business. I never lose. And now I’m losing and I can’t take it anymore.”
Drahi, in Knight’s telling, was furious, telling Billaut, “If that is how you feel, then walk out the door … This is not a democracy. It’s my company, and I run this company. At the end of the day, all of you, every single one of you, is replaceable.”
Sotheby’s did not return a request for comment at press time.
