Auctioneers

The offer price from Patrick Drahi represents a premium of 61% to Sotheby’s closing price on June 14 and a 56.3% premium to the company’s 30-day average share price.

The 55-year-old media and telecoms entrepreneur and enthusiastic art collector Patrick Drahi has made an offer to buy Sotheby's via his BidFair USA company in a $3.7bn deal.

It was slim pickings at the latest sales of Impressionist & Modern art in London as a lack of high-value consignments led to the lowest overall total for a summer series in this category for a decade.

Art market insiders are expecting a dramatic change in the dynamic at the top end of the sector if a remarkable $3.7bn bid to buy Sotheby’s completes this year.

Stamp and coin dealership Stanley Gibbons Group is due to receive £850,000 to resolve “all outstanding claims involving certain former directors of Mallett”, it announced on June 14.

A clock made for King William and Queen Mary by Thomas Tompion (1639-1713) was hammered down for £1.6m atThe Clive Collection of Exceptional Clockssale on June 19 at Bonhams.

Auctioneers from across the UK attend trade association SOFAA's biennial yacht club dinner.

With an infamous lack of a ‘signature’ look, Northern Irish painter Colin Middleton (1910-83) is something of an art historical chameleon.

The success of timed online auctions for London’s big auction houses is putting the format on the map for other salerooms too.

ATG asked practitioners to explain the ins and outs of this increasingly popular auction format.

Italy – or more specifically Sicily – came up trumps for Stamford auction house Batemans (20% buyer’s premium) in the form of this 4½in (11cm) carved coral and copper-gilt urn and cover.

Sotheby’s is showing a growing commitment to the timed-online format.

In the 1950s French designer Raymond Cohen and his firm Cohray were producing a range of ultra-modern furniture that – although made for the machine age – were all put together by hand.

Uncut and partially unopened, a truly exceptional presentation copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species… sold for a record $400,000 (£316,353) in a recent US sale.

Topping by some way an offering of 300 pieces of jewellery at Lyon & Turnbull’s (25% buyer’s premium) Edinburgh sale was a Persian gold and niello decorated Esther Scroll holder.

Ceramics commemorating the coronation of Edward VIII are less rare than often supposed, having been produced in abundance before the coronation was aborted. Most bring relatively small sums.