Thank you, Mary. Hi, everybody.

Welcome to the first call of 2013. Net income for 2012 was little over $108 million, $1.57 a diluted share, that compares to $2.46 per diluted share in 2011.

Income is down of course and that’s skewed in very significant part by the unprecedented levels of single owner sale events we had in 2011, which we were not so lucky to have in 2012. Importantly, 2012 results were further impacted by an $8.3 million or $0.12 after-tax per diluted share bond redemption loss in the fourth quarter.

As we stretched out our debt maturities and refinanced our long-term bonds by 10 years to 2022, extended and improved our credit facilities, improving our liquidity and lowering our cost of funds by $5 million annually after 2014. Our balance sheet is extremely strong and uniquely attractive in our industry.

2012 brought a number of positive developments. Consolidated sales were robust $5.4 billion as healthy bidding continued around the world for great works of art.

Private sales demonstrated an 11% increase, $906.5 million. And at the end of 2012, our finance segment on loan balance was $425 million almost doubled the prior year balance of $223 million and near peak levels in our history.

Our operating results reflect some successes, a stiff comparison to one of the best years in Sotheby’s history a year ago and a competitive climate for high end consignments. Overall, I remain confident in the marketplace.

2012 was also a year of meaningful progress in the development of Sotheby’s client focused strategies. We totally reengineered our post-sale client services in our key centers of London and New York and make an array of enhancements to facilitate and personalize our client’s experiences.

Sotheby’s is a global pioneer in broadening the art market and offering the highest levels of service and we demonstrated that across the business in 2012 and that was affirmed by our clients in a variety of studies to inquire and assure ourselves of our progress. The global reach of our team is central to our success and the value we add for our clients.

We are the first Western auction house to hold an auction in Mainland China through a groundbreaking joint venture, which allows us to take advantage of a planned Beijing Freeport providing a tax advantage platform for storage, selling, exhibition and educational activities related to the arts. We are the only auction house with a formal presence in Brazil, Argentina.

And among our 90 offices worldwide, we are the only auction house with sales in Doha, Qatar. And last year, we received bids from over 120 countries through our sales rooms.

We are stretching our opportunities, not just geographically. 30% of our clients bought in new categories in 2012, a sign of real progress in our cross-selling strategies.

We are the first auctioneer to have dedicated private sales galleries, which we call F2 within our New York offices, our offices in Hong Kong, and we are building that out in London later this year. We have held seven private sales exhibitions in partnership with artists and tastemakers around the world.

We remain focused on developing our presence in China, deepening our relationship with Chinese collectors in a number of tangible ways, including the expanded use of Chinese language on our websites. We have invested in Asian client service tasks, expansion in our Hong Kong premises, and an increased number of auction and private selling events across Asia.

These achievements along with our growing private sales in financial services businesses should provide Sotheby’s with a solid platform for growth as well as a more diversified revenue stream in future years. Couple of comments on this current year, auction sales were off to a strong start in 2013 with approximately 30% growth year-on-year that has occurred in the most competitive high-end areas of impressionist, modern and contemporary art, where the climate for the high-value consignments remains very competitive, and these cost consignments are often earning substantially thinner auction margins than the rest of our business.

I should remind you that due to the seasonality of the sales calendar with the fourth quarter typically a loss quarter, and with the anomaly of having the majority of the volume in that quarter to be very high end sales. The margins in the first quarter are often not that indicative of the rest of the year.

So, in order to enhance our revenue streams and strengthen our margins going forward, we are today announcing a pricing change, the first time in five years, effective as of March 15 of this year, buyers at auction will pay 25% on the first $100,000 of the hammer price of any lot, 20% of the next $1.9 million was the hammer price, and 12% above that $2 million mark. For over 98% of the lots that we sell, this change represents an increase of less than or about 2% of the final purchase price.

We’ll have a grid of the different currencies and the different breakpoints of our auction commission schedules in different parts of the world up on our websites in the next day or so. I’ll turn it over now to Bill Sheridan who will give you a little more color on the P&L and balance sheet.

Thank you, Bill and greetings to all. Please refer to page six of the press release, also our Form 10-K which is filed was has a lot more detail.

Overall results, net income for the full year is $108.3 million or $1.57 per diluted share, which compares to a $171 million or $2.46 per diluted share in 2011. Operating revenues decreased 8% to $768 million in 2012 due to the $79 million or 11% decline in auction commission revenues resulting from the $431 million deterioration in net sales.

Driving us forward, net auction sales is $464 million, or 58% decrease in single-owner sales from the record level of 2011. Offsetting this is a decline of $6.8 million or 10% increase in private sales commissions as well as a financial – growth in financial services of 47%.

Turning to direct cost of services, direct cost of services decreased 3.8% or 6% during the year. On the marketing expense line, marketing expenses increased $2.8 million largely due to brand promotion in Asia.

Salaries and related costs increased $4.7 million or 2% principally due to a $9.7 million increase in employee benefit plans during the period. This is partially attributable to significantly improved investment performance in deferred comp plan which increased benefits costs by $3.6 million.

This is substantially offset by market gains and trust assets below the line. Also the comparison of employee benefit costs in the year was negatively impacted by a $3.1 million increase in employee severance costs in 2012 and a $2.7 million decrease in net pension credit related to our UK defined benefit pension plan.

Salaries as a percentage of revenues for the year were 35.6%. Offsetting the increase in employee benefit and full-time salaries is $13.1 million or 19% decline in incentive compensation expense.

This decrease in compensation expense is due to the lower level of Sotheby’s earnings in 2012 in comparison to 2011. G&A, general and administrative costs decline 2.9% or 2% for the year.

Turning to net interest expense the 2012 net interest expense increased $5.4 million or 14% due to the incremental interest expense relating from the issuance of the 2022 senior notes. At the end of September Sotheby’s successfully issued $300 million in tenured debt at 5.25% which is far below the 8% effective interest rate for 2015 senior notes and 2013 convertible notes.

In November Sotheby’s redeemed all of our outstanding 2015 senior notes at a redemption price of $97 million. It is our current intent to use the $182 million of net proceeds to settle the convertible notes that can be redeemed for March through June.

Upon maturity of the convertible notes net interest expense is expected to achieve an annualized interest expense savings of $4.7 million. Turning lastly to the income tax line our effective income tax rate was approximately 32% in 2012, which compared to 26% in 2011.

The increase in effective income taxes from 2011 is due to a $13.6 million tax benefit recognized in 2011 related to the reversal of valuation allowance against certain deferred tax assets. That concludes my remarks, and I’ll pass things back to the Bill Ruprecht.

Thank you, Bill Sheridan. Just a couple more comments about what happened so far this year.

We started it off really with an old masters sale in New York where we are able to achieve about $80 million in sales, highlighted by work by Batoni, which sold for almost $11.5 million against a $6 million presale estimate and was a record for the artist. In London our Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales were at almost $375 million, the top two prices of the year so far we achieved in that sale series.

We had a monumental work of Marie-Therese by Pablo Picasso which sold for $45 million and the top line of the contemporary sales was Francis Bacon Triptych which brought $21.5 million, it’s the time of year when we begin to look first in New York and then do Hong Kong for a series of relevant and important Asian sales. In Hong Kong from the third of the 8th of April we’ve got a series of sales highlighting.

There is a wonderful piece of porcelain from the collection of Dr. Alice Cheng which carries a $10 million presale estimate.

We have got a contemporary Asian art sale from the Kurokochi Collection, works by Yoshitomo Nara. We have got a competitive climate for the most high value consignments.

And these consignments as I said are often earning thinner margins and that trend is undoubtedly going to continue in 2013. We are seeing some attractive deal flow.

I can’t give you much color yet in terms of the size of the spring sales, but we are seeing some considerable opportunity at the moment. All that being said, we are pretty confident in the opportunities that the global art market affords us, and in prices continue to be quite strong especially at the high end and we don’t expect to see that demand deteriorate in the near-term.

We look forward to your question that concludes our remarks for today. Over to you, Mary to referee any calls that people have for us.

Thank you. Good afternoon.

So, obviously very interesting move that you are making on the pricing changes, you went in excess of your primary competitor, so I am wondering if you could give us some sense of the logic in doing that? And then also, if we look historically and if memory serves correctly, when you have made these changes in the past, they have come with very little to know obvious demand impact, would you expect the same in this case?

Well, I will encourage you to study the changes on a global basis. In some markets we are and I suspect virtually identical breakpoints with our traditional competitors in some of our businesses.

And in other marketplaces, we have moved slightly ahead to what frankly we think of simply as rounder numbers and easier to communicate with some small impact on the aggregate revenues. If you want me to predict the impact from bidders as I indicated this is a less than 2% shift in pricing for the first time in five years and if past is president – past is present it would indicate the bidder is an intelligent creature and it has not undermined or harmed our ability to achieve very vigorous demand for the stock and trade of our organization, which is unique objects sought after by collectors on a worldwide basis.

Our job is to provide global sourcing, global relevance superb high-touch client service for our clientele. And at this point what our clients appear to be in generally saying to us is they want to appreciate what we are able to do in terms of bringing great works of art to the market and do so in way that they feel respected and well treated.

Relative to the global reach that you mentioned, I found it interesting that you did specifically call out Brazil and Argentina and the formal presence you have there, can you give us a sense of the level of opportunity you see in those markets?

It’s a pretty fuzzy crystal ball George, but what I will say is we are seeing enormous wealth creation in Brazil. We think its part of our brand promise that we are relevant to people of great wealth.

And we have continued to find ways of building relationships and activity in that marketplace without being in a position to describe on a transaction-by-transaction basis who bought what. It is fair to say that many of the most significant transactions in our company over the last 12 months included some powerful Brazilian bidding.

So, we don’t look for countries that are simply additions to our quiver so we can boast some ridiculous reached that’s not relevant to our promise and our marketplace. But in places like Brazil, which are exciting dynamic countries with a lot of runway ahead of them we think it’s really important for us to be there.

And we’ve been there for long time building relationships and that is bearing quite a lot of fruit for us.

Okay. Lastly if I could just on the European scenario that you see obviously still a struggling economy in general, can you talk about the supply and demand characteristics of that market you might expect over the next year or two, should we see more supply given some of the struggles you’re seeing?

Well, as China in 2012, suffered and if you look at the Beijing marketplace alone, you’ll see that the auctioneers who are operating in Beijing were down over 50%. And so while our Asian businesses in Hong Kong clearly moved south in 2012, they didn’t move south on the scale of the Beijing houses.

The big surprise to us in 2012 was strength of the American demand. And in early 2013 somewhat counter intuitively the strength of the European demand.

I don’t think that means much yet George in terms of whether or not we are going see supply out of Europe because as in the past I would say using tangibles as a form of asset and wealth transfer between generations has got a very long history in many European cultures. And in times of great adversity, I think some of those assets get turned to for liquidity on some of the other traditional resources for business man and women get exhausted the comprised.

So, I would be surprised to see deterioration in the European sourcing of opportunities, in fact I would expect that likely to continue to be an extremely lucrative arena for our business.

Okay, thank you very much.

Hi, thanks guys. Regarding your comments deal flow, are you saying that you tend think that the deal flow is better than last year for the spring season.

Also could you give us a briefing on look forward for the single owner comparisons and do you expect the trend to continue from which you faced a record level previously? And finally, if you can just give us a little inside into the factors that drive private sales versus your regulator auction sales, do you think they are distinct customers or there can be cannibalization in some instances?

Thank you.

Three questions, however the first two are essentially guidance questions. So, I will declined answer them because we don’t offer guidance.

I can’t tell you whether this week’s impression of significant opportunities marries as hotter or colder than last week sort of last year’s this week, because with all respect I’m not good enough to be able to tell you what last week felt like the third week of February and the fourth week of February of 2012. Similarly, I can’t offer you guidance in terms of the overall scale of Single-Owner collections.

We are very much at the beginning of the year and kind of discussions which were being pursued with families that could constitute our Single Owner sales or and there are irons in the fire, how many of them mature on what timeframe is going to continue to frustrate each and every year analyst in our stock because we simply don’t have much visibility on volumes. On the third question, it was again private sales and cannibalization issues.

What we do is we put the same group of people in charge of both channels all over and in reality what that does is it’s a very positive development for the auction, as well as the private sale channel, because you don’t have different groups of people looking to cannibalize each other. They are looking for robust, vigorous sales that the public come to, get excited by and create buzzy positive outcomes.

And there are other circumstances where either because of the unique level of knowledge we have about a demand side player or of a unique level of understanding as to what else maybe coming into the marketplace. We can create a premium price for somebody really.

So, I think it’s a very reasonable question and frankly it’s something or other we were relatively worried about 5 years ago, when we began to initiate a push towards significant private sales as a relevant channel alongside of option, but what we found given the unique structures we have put in place is that there is a very responsible group of people who care desperately about both their customers and about their public sales successes, and we found the balancing act not something or other terribly difficult to maintain.

Got it, thank you. Best regards for the year.

Thank you. Bill, in terms of fourth quarter by chance did you notice any impact of the fear of a state tax law change or any sort of tax law changes here in the United States affecting works that were being rushed out for consignments or did you see any impact of that at all in Q4?

No, I mean, I would have guessed which would be suggesting, Rommel people would have been rushing in the fourth quarter to market of looking to get lower rates on effective sales, but my own impression is that, that was a de minimis, if even a realistic exercise with sequestration gymnastics going on, over 2.5% reduction in the federal budget. I am of the view that what we are really looking at is more of the same in terms of the lot of fear mongering and rhetoric, and not so much difference in terms of the effective tax rates in this country.

I think people are probably a little smarter than some of the newspapers that we all read.

And Rommel, the capital gains rate for paintings and art objects didn’t really changed this year, so really it wasn’t that much of an incentive to move things forward?

Okay, great, that’s all I have. Thanks very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your interest in Sotheby’s. Wish us luck over the next couple of months in the spring cycle, and we’ll look forward to talking to you again in May.

That concludes our remarks and have a great Thursday. Bye-bye