E-Photo
Issue #14  4/11/2000
 
Other News: Former Auction Heads Involved in Antitrust Scheme, According to NY Times Article

By Alex Novak

According to a recent New York Times article, Justice Department investigators reportedly now have evidence that A. Alfred Taubman of Sotheby's and Sir Anthony Tennant of Christie's discussed setting commissions for buyers and sellers in person and then instructed their CEOs to follow up and implement their plan.

Taubman, who still controls about 63% of the voting stock of Sotheby's, continues to deny complicity, referring all calls to his attorney.  Reportedly Taubman has recently suggested his own son as the new chairman for Sotheby's.  An interesting choice, don't you think?

Sotheby's paper has also been downgraded by several sources, and the stock has been drifting back down to just above 16, near it's all-time low.

Meanwhile Butterfield was also subpoenaed in the case.  The Justice Department's antitrust division was seeking information about "seller's commissions and buyer's premiums and discussions, agreements or understandings with other auction houses in each case since 1992", according to eBay's most recent annual report issued March 30.

This is a story that just won't go away.

Novak has over 47 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formally board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.

Novak has had photography articles and columns published in several newspapers, the American Photographic Historical Society newsletter, the Photograph Collector and the Daguerreian Society newsletter. He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, etc.