Sotheby’s bid dropped

Press, 30 June 1983, Page 11

Sotheby’s bid dropped

NZPA-Reuter London Two American millionaires, Marshall Cogan and Stephen Swid, yesterday abandoned their bitterly opposed take-over bid for Sotheby’s, the 239-year-old auction house. Their withdrawal after three months of acrimonious public debate makes it all but certain that the other American bidding for the company, Alfred Taubman, will succeed.

Sotheby Parke Bernet and Company announced that Messrs Cogan and Swid had conditionally agreed to sell their 29.95 per cent stake. The two young New Yorkers, who built up a business empire selling carpet felt and furniture, will get £7 ($16.52) from Mr Taubman for each share. That is much more than the £5.20 ($12.27) they offered when they were buying or even their later, higher offer of £6.30 ($14.8). Sotheby’s directors, who fiercely opposed Messrs Cogan and Swid as men who knew nothing of the auction

world, said yesterday that they were delighted with the news. Mr Taubman, who entered the bidding earlier this month as a “white knight” to save Sotheby’s from Messrs Cogan and Swid, must now win the approval of the British Monopolies Commission and United States anti-trust authorities for the purchase. Then Mr Taubman, armed with almost 45 per cent of Sotheby’s shares, will bid for the remaining 55 per cent. “He’s interested in nothing less than 100 per cent,” a spokesman for him said. Market analysts said that Messrs Cogan’s and Swid’s withdrawal appeared to have been prompted largely by the prospect of a long battle before the Monopolies Commission. Other factors could be the profit they will reap from their brief association with Sotheby’s by the sale to Mr Taubman and the almost solidly hostile response accorded them by Sotheby’s.