![]() I’ve always chosen areas that are profoundly interesting to me, stimulating intellectually.” “All of those businesses were very creative businesses,” he says, gold gavel-shaped cufflinks glinting from under his blue suit sleeves. Media, entertainment and now fine art: for Smith there’s a common thread that connects the entries on his rather eclectic résumé. Before that he had served as president of local media at Cablevision. He was poached by Sotheby’s just a year into that role. During the last six months of his brief tenure as president of the Madison Square Garden Company, which owns several world-famous entertainment and sport venues across the US, the company’s profits doubled. It’s not the first time that Smith has had an immediate impact on a company under his command. Not bad for the oldest publicly traded firm on the New York Stock Exchange. The company’s share price during the second quarter also rose to its highest level since the company went public in 1988. These measures saw Sotheby’s consolidated sales rise by 4 per cent in the first half of this year compared to the previous six-month period to $2.8bn (€2.4bn). ![]() Part of that has been a concerted push into the middle market across all of Sotheby’s businesses – from art to jewellery and from fine wine to classic cars – with a shift away from the confines of Sotheby’s storied auction rooms and towards digital channels for bidding and selling. Smith – who unusually for a Sotheby’s CEO has no formal background in the art world – was tasked with leading that rejuvenation. ![]() The financier Daniel Loeb memorably likened the firm to “an Old Master painting in desperate need of restoration”. Changing perceptions without compromising the brand – founded in 1744 – has been something of a priority for Smith since he took up his post in 2015.īack then Sotheby’s had, even according to some of its leading investors, stagnated and fallen behind the times. “When you think about Sotheby’s,” says Tad Smith, the spirited CEO of the historic auction house, “you typically think, ‘Oh, if only I had $20m or $30m, I would go to Sotheby’s and buy a Picasso!’” The truth is, he notes, half of what sold at Sotheby’s worldwide in 2016 were objects valued at $10,000 or less. ![]()
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