Sotheby’s Is Hit With Its Fourth Shareholder Lawsuit in a Month Over Its Acquisition Deal With Patrick Drahi

A fourth class-action lawsuit has been filed against Sotheby’s
auction house following news of its $3.7 billion acquisition
agreement with Patrick Drahi, an art collector and telecom magnate
who plans to acquire the auction house through his entity
BidFair.

A Sotheby’s shareholder named Phillip Stevens filed the lawsuit
on August 1 and makes nearly identical claims as the three previous
suits, namely that the information contained in a July 12 proxy
statement included incomplete information about the lead-up to the
Drahi deal.

“In order to convince Sotheby’s shareholders to vote in favor
of the Proposed Transaction, the Board authorized the filing
of a materially incomplete and misleading” proxy statement,
according to Stevens’s complaint, which goes on to allege that this
constitutes violations of Securities and Exchange Commission laws.
“While touting the fairness of the Merger Consideration to the
Company’s shareholders in the Proxy, Defendants have failed to
disclose certain material information that is necessary for
shareholders to properly assess the fairness of the Proposed
Transaction.”

Attorneys for Stevens did not respond to a request for
comment.

Sotheby’s reiterated its previous statement on the earlier
lawsuits: “As the vast majority of all public company mergers over
$100 million are the subject of shareholder litigation, the
lawsuits filed were expected and routine. We do not expect the
suits to have any impact on our targeted closing timing of the
fourth quarter of this year.”

The first two lawsuits were brought by Shiva Stein and Eli
Goffmna in New York last month. Another shareholder, Michael
Kent, filed suit in federal court in Delaware.

Like the other lawsuits, Stevens’s complaint, filed in US
District Court for the Southern District of New York, names
Sotheby’s and a dozen executives and board members, including CEO
Tad Smith and board chair Domenico de Sole, as defendants.

The post Sotheby’s Is Hit With Its Fourth Shareholder
Lawsuit in a Month Over Its Acquisition Deal With Patrick Drahi
appeared first on artnet News.