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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.

A silver casserole tureen was among the highlight sales during the early hours of The Art & Antiques Fair Olympia.

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.

Locks of Beethoven’s hair are known to have been taken from the composer on his deathbed in 1827, but an earlier and substantial sample featured in a recent London sale. Sold for £28,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) against an estimate of £12,000-15,000, it is certainly a well-documented souvenir.

The International Antiques & Collectors Fair (IACF) has added the Peterborough Festival of Antiques to its extensive portfolio.

Two studies by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones for his 1868 oil Hymenaeus will soon be reunited with the finished painting.

A Chinese parcel gilt bronze censer, that was being used to hold tennis balls when first seen by valuers last year, has sold at auction in Switzerland for close to £3.3m.

Visitors to the ABA’s 'Firsts: London’s Rare Book Fair' spent more than £3m over the events three days.

Caroline Penman, organiser of the Chelsea Antiques Fair since 1983, is hoping to find a new owner willing to maintain the venerable event.

Auction house Fellows is holding two special events in July and is offering ATG readers a discount on tickets.

A maquette for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in London’s Tavistock Square – valued at £20,000 on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow – was the top lot in a sale of works from the Polish-born artist Fredda Brilliant (1903-99).

A rare Roman gold aureus, found by a metal detectorist in a field in Kent earlier this year, was hammered down at Dix Noonan Webb last week for a house record £460,000.

Sotheby’s believes it has found a missing piece from the Lewis chessmen hoard – the cache of 12th or 13th century walrus ivory carvings that chiefly resides in the British Museum.

Connect – The Independent Art Fair, which debuted at London’s Mall Galleries in January, has added a June event to the 2020 calendar.

An impressive 8in (20cm) high ice pail, cover and liner made what is thought to be a record auction result for Swansea porcelain when it sold for £38,000 hammer at Bonhams in Knightsbridge on June 5.