Reports suggest that the auction house Sotheby’s is planning to mass lay off employees from its London branch.
The Art Newspaper reported that the mega auction house is set to lay off 50 employees from its London location alone. This is a huge number even for an auction house as big as Sotheby’s. The report further stated that similar layoffs might occur at other Sotheby’s locations in Europe, as well as at Sotheby’s New York.
The report is particularly surprising because Sotheby’s does not seem to be dwindling when it comes to revenues. While its auction weeks in London in March and in New York in May were not huge successes, they managed to get decent returns. The March auction fetched $126.6 million while the May sales brought $267.3 million. While both figures were within the pre-sale estimates, they leaned towards the lower end. Even the top brass of the museum admitted to be pleased with the results. Sotheby’s did not directly address the report, but only said that the firm is entering a “consultation period”, which generally implies that it might be holding fewer in-house auctions.
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Even last year’s well-publicized layoffs only fired 10 employees. While they were all senior staff, the speculated reason at the time was their involvement in NFT-related artworks, which had seen a rapid decline in popularity since last year. There are also rumors that Sotheby’s might go public once again. The auction house was public until 2019 when it was acquired by Patrick Drahi and went private.
