Buying Sotheby’s? What an Odd Idea!

The phone seldom rings as much as it did on that Monday. Everybody was exchanging press releases and, above all, questions. Nobody saw anybody, much less Drahi, who is almost unknown in the art world, acquiring Sotheby’s, and taking it out of the New York Stock Exchange. What could be the various players’ interests? For Drahi, more than anything else this seems to be a deal. He wants to win across the board and achieve a social position that, oddly, he had failed to obtain with his media acquisitions. The purchase also allows him to become more firmly rooted in the United States, where he envisages his business future. It gives him access to all the decision-making art collectors, of which there are many in America, for a price that, even if it was a premium on the day of the announcement, represented just…