Bankers have sounded out potential buyers for a minority stake in Sotheby’s as its owner Patrick Drahi comes under pressure to sell assets at his indebted telecoms group Altice.
Those approached included European billionaires and the Qatar Investment Authority, said two people with knowledge of the contacts. The QIA held unfruitful talks with Drahi a year ago about buying a Sotheby’s stake via a potential capital increase, another person directly in the know said.
However, people close to Drahi said the Franco-Israeli billionaire was reluctant to offload Sotheby’s, which he has owned since 2019 through his personal holding company. The bankers’ approaches were informal and a deal was not imminent, they cautioned.
“Sotheby’s is a unique asset that has regularly attracted interest from investors interested in taking a minority stake,” said one of the people.
The Hamas attacks on Israel may also have complicated a potential sale to Qatar, a second person familiar with his thinking said. Drahi is a prominent figure in Israel, where he owns a television news channel and a telecoms operator, and Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political office since 2012 while pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of aid into Gaza.
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