Details Emerge About Auction House Layoffs

Published: January 14, 2009

Christopher Gaillard, who headed the contemporary print department at Sotheby's, was let go in a recent wave of layoffs.

NEW YORK—Details have begun to emerge about Sotheby’s cost-cutting layoffs, which the house announced last December. According to a report in Bloomberg, the auction house has laid off approximately 60 employees in the U.S. since mid-December, including, most prominently, Christopher Gaillard, the head of the contemporary print department who was thought to be a potential star auctioneer, and John Tancock, an art scholar and senior vice president who had been with the company for three and a half decades.The layoffs reached all departments and levels of seniority within the company. Experts in ceramics and French and English furniture were let go, as were employees in the Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami offices. At the end of December 2007, according to company filings, Sotheby’s had 605 employees in North America, and 1,555 worldwide. The house, which has yet to announce its fourth-quarter earnings for 2008, declined to provide more updated numbers or to comment on the recent layoffs. Meanwhile, rival Christie’s began its announced “reorganization” on Monday. The house let go approximately 80 employees from the New York office, according to a staffer who was terminated. “Virtually all departments and geographies are affected by the reorganization,” a Christie’s spokesman said in an e-mail statement.