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Sotheby’s is offering sellers interest of 7 per cent to delay paying out their sale proceeds as the auction house grapples with a cash squeeze in a poor art market.
In mid-2025, Sotheby’s introduced an “extended settlement terms payments option”, according to three people familiar with the scheme.
One of the people said that the auction house had offered to pay a rate of 8 per cent following the sale of more than $30mn of property if the seller allowed Sotheby’s to hold on to some of their funds for at least six months. It has since reduced the rate on offer following cuts by the US Federal Reserve last year.
Sotheby’s had previously retained some clients’ money beyond the period specified in its terms and conditions, a second person familiar with the company said.
Franco-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi acquired the auction house in 2019 through a leveraged buyout, and Sotheby’s has had to contend with a heavy debt burden at a time when demand for fine art has been in decline.
The global art market shrank 16 per cent between 2022 and 2024, according to a report by Art Basel and UBS, before eking out growth of 4 per cent last year.
Sotheby’s annual pre-tax loss more than doubled to $248mn in 2024. Accounts for that year showed that it had more than $1bn of “client payables” outstanding — money it owes to clients — which was lower than $1.7bn at the end of 2023. Its total sales in 2025 were $7.1bn, up from $6bn the year before.
Drahi is known for his flair for financial engineering and has also used various methods to delay supplier payments at his troubled Altice telecoms empire.
Sotheby’s carries a junk credit rating due to its high debt load, with rating agency S&P warning in November that it could lower it further if the auction house is “unable to address its upcoming debt maturities in a timely fashion”.
The auction house had previously been delaying making payments to some clients because of poor cash flow at certain times of year, the second person familiar with Sotheby’s said.
“It was extremely common because of the extraordinary financial strain that the company was under in 2024 and 2025 for the company to routinely just hold client payments at the end of difficult quarters,” they said.
Monies due to clients then would sometimes be held over to the start of the next quarter, the person said. “Many clients who are wealthy wouldn’t notice this.”
Sotheby’s said the “extended settlement terms payment option” was “one of a number of innovations” that offered clients “greater optionality and financial flexibility”.
The company said: “Sotheby’s is in a particularly strong financial position having led the art market in 2025 . . . We operate in accordance with longstanding market and industry practices and offer clients a range of settlement options.”
Sotheby’s standard terms state that it will pay sellers 45 days after a sale, assuming the buyer has paid. Rival Christie’s pays out after 35 days.
One art adviser whose client sold a collection of dozens of items at Sotheby’s said their client received payment eight months later than they had anticipated.
The auction house’s terms said it would only pay the seller once it had received payment for every item in the collection, a position the adviser characterised as unusual.
A person familiar with Sotheby’s practices said that the payment terms were “a function of specific contract considerations and not the normal course of business”.
