Thank you, Shannon. Good morning and thank you for joining us today.

With me here is Bill Ruprecht, Sotheby’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Patrick McClymont, our Chief Financial Officer. I should highlight that during the course of this call, the company may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company.

We wish to caution you that such projections and statements are only predictions and involve risks and uncertainties resulting in the possibility that the actual events or performance will differ materially from such predictions. We refer you to the documents that company files periodically with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the company’s most recently filed Form 10-Q and 10-K.

These documents identify important factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in the projections or forward-looking statements. Now, I will turn the call over to Bill.

Thank you, Jenny. Good morning, everybody.

Thanks for joining us and you’re your ongoing interest in Sotheby’s. Before I get to the results, let me take a moment to address our agreement with Third Point, and as we announced on Monday, the details are publicly filed and available to all of you.

As I said when we announced the agreement, I welcome our newest directors to the board and look forward to working with them confident that we all share common goal of delivering great value to Sotheby’s shareholders and clients. This agreement ensures that our focus is on the business and that we can only benefit from having far fresh voices and viewpoints our board.

I’d like to particularly thank the team here at Sotheby’s for their unwavering commitment and dedication to clients during this challenging period. We have the most dedicated professional team in the business and they’re the engine that drives this franchise.

I’m pleased to say we had an outstanding first quarter 2014. Results picked up where we ended up 2013, where we have the fastest growing global auction company.

Today we reported first quarter results with a 40% increase in net auction sales of 32% increase of consolidated sales to 1 billion driving a 73% improvement in financial performance to a net loss of $6.1 million, $0.09 a share. The substantial improvement is primarily due to a 34% increase in this February sale of impressionist art and contemporary art, with our sales of impressionist art achieving the highest ever total for any sales series ever held in London by any auction house.

Auction commission margins decreased from 15% to 14.3%, primarily due to the margins achieved with certain high value consignments in the highly successful London impressionist sales. We produced strong profitability and was the cornerstone of those February sales.

Total expenses increased 24% to a $152.7 million, that’s not a trend line to expect it’s due to a $23.8 million increase in the cost of principal revenues, attributable to transactions completed in the first quarter as well as special charges of $5.7 million, related to shareholder activism and the resulting proxy contest. When you exclude those costs, adjusted expenses were flat when compared to the first quarter a year ago despite the 40% increase in auction activity.

Following our initial cost structure review completed late last year, we announced $22 million of specific cost savings for 2014. We’re committed to identifying and realizing additional savings and then improve cost structure for Sotheby’s in 2014 and beyond.

During the first quarter, we announced our capital allocation and financial policy review, delivered a $300 million special dividend to shareholders and repurchased 25 million of common stock into the 150 million repurchase program announced. I think it established a dedicated credit facility for our growing financial services business, and as of today, we have a debt financed $295 million of the loan portfolio paving the way for returning additional capital to shareholders in the future.

Sotheby’s is thriving today and are well positioned to deliver great results for our clients and values to our shareholders as these results clearly demonstrate. I’ll turn things over to Patrick McClymont, our Chief Financial Officer, who will give you some granular detail about the numbers.

Thank you, Bill. I would also like to express my appreciation for the high quality work being done day-in and day-out by my teammates here at Sotheby’s.

As evidenced by our solid first quarter performance and quality of our spring sales that began this evening it’s clear our team is executing at high level. As I go through the numbers, please refer to the financial information at the end of the press release.

Our 10-Q has additional information that will be filed shortly. As you know the first quarter is typically a loss quarter at Sotheby’s.

This year, as Bill mentioned, our results have improved substantially over the first quarter a year ago. Net loss was $6.1 million or $0.09 per share, compared to prior year net loss of $22.3 million or $0.33 per share.

Let’s look at each of our main operating segments. Starting with the agency segment, agency revenues grew by 29 million or 31% to 123 million in the first quarter, primarily due to a 26 million or 33% increase in auction commission revenues, resulting from a 40% increase in net auction sales over the period.

In the first quarter, agency direct cost increased 2 million or 24%m, primarily as a result of the level of composition of the Sotheby’s auction offerings during the period. Importantly, auction direct cost as a percentage of net auction sales, decreased from 1.48% to 1.21%.

We’ve announced previously that increased efficiencies and enhanced spending controls will facilitate a reduction of 10 basis points in this metric for the full year 2014 when compared to 2013. Turning to the principal segment, the activities of this segment includes the sale of art works that have been purchased opportunistically by Sotheby’s, our retail wine business, and also the remaining inventory of Noortman Master Paintings.

Principal revenues grew 24.9 million, 26 million in the first quarter and correspondingly cost of principal revenues increased 28.3 million or 24.5 million in the same period. Therefore, principal gross profit for the quarter increased 1.1 million to 1.5 million, due to a series of profitable sales in the first quarter of works acquired for investment purposes for 2013.

The largest of these were sold at auction, generating an additional 1.3 million at the agency segment auction commission revenues. Now the finance segment, the 9% improvement in the finance segment gross profit to 7.5 million in the first quarter, reflects the steady growth in the loan portfolio throughout 2013.

As of April 30th, the finance segment loan portfolio was approximately 572 million, a 21% increase from year-end, and borrowings under the finance segment revolving credit facility stood at 295 million. As we have said, the debt funding of our loan portfolio will reduce the finance segment’s cost of capital and enhance returns.

Turning to the cost side of the business, adjusted expenses which exclude the cost of principal revenues attributable to transactions completed in the period, as well as special charges related to shareholder activism and resulting proxy contest were flat in the first quarter in comparison to a year ago. We are continuing to review resource allocations across the business, and anticipate realizing additional opportunities to further improve our cost structure.

Marketing expenses decreased by 1.6 million or 33% in the first quarter, reflecting a more targeted approach to spending on core strategic priorities in 2014. In particular, there was a significant decrease in Egypt’s sponsorship, charitable donation activity with [inaudible] institutions.

We also had a lower level of promotional expenses as first quarter 2013 results included one-time cost related to Sotheby’s 40th anniversary in Hong Kong. Salaries and related costs increased 5.1 million or 8% in the first quarter of 2014, partly due to higher full time salaries expense which is up 3 million or 9%.

Drivers of this increase were the impact of mid-year strategic staff investments in 2013, which were implemented in part to support Sotheby’s growth in Asia, as well as targeted salary increases taking effect in 2014. Excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rates changes, full time salaries increased 2.2 million, or 6% in comparison to the prior period.

Also impacting salaries and related was an increase in share based payment expense of 1.8 million or 41% in the quarter, largely due to management’s quarterly assessment of the likelihood that performance based equity compensation awards were less [ph]. In 2014, management expects that full time salaries would increase by approximately 7% to 8% excluding the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates.

In the first quarter, general and administrative expenses decreased 6.7 million or 15%, largely due to decreases in professional fees and other indirect expenses. We expect to reduce professional fees by approximately 9 million, or 15% in the full year 2014, principally as a result of the negotiated reductions in rates and reduced scope of services.

We also project spending production of approximately 4 million across other categories of general and administrative expenses. You will see on the P&L, a line for special charges.

In the first quarter, Sotheby’s incurred 5.7 million of third party advisory, legal and other professional service fees directly associated with the issues related to shareholder activism, and the resulting proxy contest with Third Point. We expect to incur between 12 million and 15 million of additional special charges in the second quarter of 2014, which includes up to 10 million for the reimbursement by Sotheby’s Third Point expenses in connection with the settlement agreement announced on Monday.

For the three months ended March 31, 2014, net interest expense decreased 3.8 million, or 31% as a result of repayment of Sotheby’s 308 convertible notes on a maturity in June 2013. Our effective income tax rate for the first quarter of 2014 is 6%, compared to an effective income tax benefit rate of 30% for the prior period.

The income tax expense for the quarter is primarily the result of a $3.1 million tax charge to reduce the value of certain deferred tax assets, to reflect the enactment of the New York state 2014-2015 Budget Act, which is expected to reduce the amount of taxable income a portion to the New York state, thereby reducing Sotheby’s date of effective income tax rate beginning in 2015. Management estimates that Sotheby’s annual effective income tax rate for 2014 excluding discrete items will be approximately 36%.

In 2013, Sotheby’s annual effective income tax rate excluding discrete items was approximately 30%. The increase in the estimated annual effective tax rate between the periods, principally due to management’s conclusion the first quarter of 2014, at the current earnings on its foreign subsidiaries will not be indefinitely reinvested as discussed above.

At this time, I’d like to hand the call back over to Bill Ruprecht for his concluding remarks.

Thanks, Patrick. Couple of comments about past and upcoming sales, the second quarter began in Hong Kong where we had a five day sale series which was up 56% year-on-year.

One of the highlights there was this dominative porcelain chicken cup, we sold for US$36 million, a world record for piece of Chinese porcelain and one of the three works sold there are more than HKD100 million. Beginning this evening in New York, we presented impressionists to modern art sales which had a pre-sale estimate of $264 million to $383 million.

Highlighting the sales are 14 works by Picasso that spent seven decades led by a great picture of his mistress Marie-Therese. And next week in New York, we offer a group of extraordinary works of our contemporary sales which have a combined pre-sale estimate of over $400 million, the highest estimated contemporary art sale in art history led by Koons, Basquiat and Warhol, among others included there a group of works from the Sender Collection, a pioneering group of contemporary art works that bring together many of the most influential artists past several decades.

The collection will be presented over the course of the next 18 months, both in London and New York and is estimated to bring in excess of $70 million, including about a 100 works in next week’s contemporary sales. And next week, we’ll also look forward to our magnificent jewel sale in Geneva, which carries a pre-sale estimate of $93 million to $140 million, and is highlighted by some impressive private collections, period jewels design works some with noble provenance.

This is an exciting time at Sotheby’s with strong global demand and high prices for great rarities. The market is presenting us with some terrific opportunities, but as I have said previously, we are not pursuing everything that comes our way for consideration.

Some things just come with an extraordinarily low margin or what we consider to be unattractive risk dynamics. We are gaining confidence in finding additional expense reduction to be on those we’ve announced earlier, and we also see real opportunity to expand in the broad middle market $50,000 to $2 million zone together these can make a real difference in driving our bottom-line margins.

We have of course spent a lot of time on the road in recent months engaging investors getting prospective and sharing ideas, that’s been very valuable and the fresh perspective certainly are informing our outlook. Most notably, recent results in our global sales room are encouraging.

We have a number of very exciting events on the immediate horizon, and I continue to have real confidence in Sotheby’s and the art market now and into the future. Happy to take your questions that includes any prepared remarks.

Hi. Congratulations on the revenue growth.

Patrick, on the auction commission margin side, could you speak to any encouraging thoughts or cautious news that we should have there as we model that going forward? Also, your Op expense on adjusted basis you know it’s flattish is that how we should model that in the next few quarters?

And Bill, if you could just speak through your vision of the evolution of the business on the fundamental side as you complete strategic due diligence and where you might see opportunities whether they’d be line extensions and private sales in other businesses to potentially reduce volatility over time?

Good morning, Oliver. Why don’t we have Bill talk a little bit about the auction commission margin, and I can give some thoughts on operating expenses.

And then I think your third question was quite broad, we can just give you some thoughts on how we’re thinking about the business.

Yeah Oliver, on the auction commission margin, I don’t think we think it’s getting any worse, and there are certainly opportunities for optimism. The second quarter includes some significant balance sheet exposure for us which could move that margin in any of the variety of ways which I’m simply not smart enough to fully predict.

We think we’ve made prudent choices. We have quite enthusiastic response to the works which we’re presenting and so I’m of the view that this is an ongoing challenge that we’re managing really responsibly and in the competitive market.

On the expense line, the comment about flattishness you want to take that Patrick?

Sure. I think on the expense side after one quarter, we are on plan with what we had talked about early part of this year after the work that we’ve done in the fourth quarter of last year, and so we think that that’s evidence of good progress against the goal that we’ve set for ourselves.

And what we’re doing now is thinking about additional opportunities to look at our cost structure, make sure that we’re getting the right return on our investments and we do think there are additional opportunities to find ways to create efficiencies. So, I think from a modeling standpoint you should focus on what we communicated the early part of this year.

We’ll keep doing the hard work here of identifying additional opportunities and if we’ve got more to say we’ll folks know.

And more broadly Oliver, we’ve throughout the spring talking about quite robustly about a number of themes of opportunities for growth and development to create value in this business. Both the financial services business which has been on a very significant growth trajectory and is a business which we really do like.

The private sales of gallery business which has grown 30% year-on-year for the last five years on a compounded basis, which is now roughly approximate about 20% of our global commerce that’s something we can really continue to think as real opportunity, because we have a much smaller slice of that market place than we do in the auction market place. And we’ve got some proprietary skills and knowledge that helps us grow in that space.

Clearly, we’ve got some brand opportunities that we continue to consider having initiated a very appealing retail jewelry business and wine business, both of which have prospects that we are actively considering. Those are a number of the themes that we pursue Oliver is there is a specific thing you want us to speak to I’m happy to try.

Thank you very much. And the last question is on the financial policy review, you made a lot of progress there over return to capital what are the next catalyst that we should watch for?

And is there an update on your progress regarding real-estate and monetization there?

Well on the capital allocation work that we did announced in late January, I think what we’ve communicated is we’ve got a framework in place now of how we think about allocating capital within our two businesses. We’re going through the process now of implementing that.

I think the clearest evidence is on the financial services side of the business where you’ll see that we’ve begun the process of drawing down on our credit facility and funding our loans with debt until we feel like we’ve made good progress in that regard. And on the agency side of the house, we’re also implementing various steps that we’ve talked about and so we’re continuing to work through it.

At the end of this year, we’ll sit down, we’ll look at the progress we’ve made we’ll look at the performance of the business. We’ll sit down with the board and go through a similar discussion that we had late last year, early part of this year and our goal would be to communicate the outcome of that to shareholders when we announce fourth quarter earnings in early 2015.

And on the real-estate side there is no specific update. We continue to go through the process that we’ve described and talked to industries about through the course of this spring.

Okay, perfect. And Bill for luxury retail consolidation sounds pretty interesting.

Good luck guys. Thanks a lot.

Yeah, thanks. Patrick in your comments you talked about full time salaries rising.

I wonder if you can just provide a little more granularity. Is there some sort of unique source of waive pressure in the industry you need to be on market or is it may be a regional thing or a labor rates rising I wonder if you could just talk to that point?

I think the biggest driver and we’ve talked about this on today’s call, we’ve talked about in our fourth quarter call as well, really with the strategic decision meaningfully expand our footprint in Asia, and what we’ve done is essentially doubled the footprint there. And the nature of this business is the talent that we need to on board to execute that strategy is expensive.

It’s people who have general expertise in collecting categories and its client managers who can actually deal with highly sophisticated clients and build and cultivate relationships. And so, I think that’s the core as we’ve made a conscious decision to really invest in that business.

We’re pleased with the results that we saw on the fourth quarter of last year, and those will continue in the first quarter of this year. And that’s really the key driver of the expense growth.

Great. Fair enough.

Thanks very much.

Thank you. Patrick, could you just repeat the charges you’re taking and the money related to the Third Point expenses I’m not sure I heard that correctly.

Sure. So first quarter the number is 5.7 million, and in the second quarter we expect to incur an incremental 12 million to 15 million, of which up to 10 million would be the reimbursement of Third Point’s expenses.

Okay. So I hoped I heard that wrong, but I didn’t.

Okay. And relative to your middle market, new middle market strategy can you just help us understand the logic there?

This had been the market you had moved away from a few years back, really trying to move to the upper end focus. What’s changed there?

And as your current rate expenses down I’m curious how you make that happen?

George, I understand your comment, but I fundamentally disagree with your characterization. What we’ve done has been very consistent in giving voice to a decision and reinforcing it at the low value lots, the under $5,000 property which is handled through our system, should be thought of as an accommodation to our clients who we have a broader relationship with.

I mean we’re happy to handle those things in a careful and robust way. We however, don’t view those as a significant income opportunity.

We have a teens percentage of the lots that we handle of which our $5,000 and under if you juxtaposed that last year to our tradition competitor Christie’s they had 52% of their lots selling for $5,000 or less generating about 1.8% of their sales. So, from our perspective that’s of bewildering allocation of resource.

The opportunity that’s attractive is in the $50,000 to $1 million, $2 million, $3 million zone, where you get very attractive margins on that property. And we want to make sure we are capturing as much opportunity in that space as we can and that is where more than 40% of our revenues come from on an annual basis.

So it is the bell curve for the company where the property that we handle is more abundant than $30 million paintings. The price negotiations are minimal against our fees, and it’s an opportunity that we want to make sure that with our current infrastructure rather than a transformed or materially growing infrastructure our throughput is as sensible and as profitable as possible in that area where there are significant revenue opportunities.

Okay. Helpful clarification I think I was confusing low end with mid end.

Thank you.

That’s terrific. Thanks George.

Appreciate the question.

Hi. Good morning everyone.

I wanted to start with if you can give me an update on the diamond that’s on the balance sheet. I was wondering if there was an update as to anything that’s taking place there and then there are couple of follow ups

No there is no update.

Okay. As far as the expenses, and thank you for laying out the expenses involved with the proxy battle, I was wondering if you could sort of may be parse out the third quarter and fourth quarter of last year, because basically at some point the company will be able to sort of anniversary the additional expenses that took place from this process.

And so, I was wondering if those any amount that you could sort of parse out and say okay these are the additional expenses that we took on in the third and fourth quarter of last year as part of this because clearly you wouldn’t expect that to be a recurring expense?

The expenses in the third and fourth quarter related to this were immaterial and you’ll see that everything that we’ve spent on this will be picked up on the special charges line.

Okay. Usually when the press release comes out for the quarter usually the Q comes out.

I was wondering if the Q will be out today as well.

Shortly yes.

Okay, after the call. And you’ve mentioned as far the increased focus on that mid level which is the very profitable part of the business for you.

Are you looking at this sort of go into different strategy in order to engage that level of work in that and $1 million range and what have you, would that incur different strategies in order to generate growth in that area or would that be part of perhaps future strategic review with entire new board and something that we would look forward to later in the year?

I think the way to think about this is we are already very relevant in the existing categories in the price spent that Bill talked about. And so, the first order of business is simply making sure that we increase throughput at those levels.

And so if we can make an individual sell little bit bigger or if it makes sense to add any sales for the calendar focused on properties within these price spends, those are all relatively great forward steps that we think can lead to increase throughput without adding a whole bunch of infrastructure costs. And so, we don’t view this as a fundamental shift for change, it’s simply saying let’s as a team go out and figure out way to increase our throughput at those levels.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Shannon. Thanks everybody for being on the call.

And we will look forward to our sales over the next 10 days, and then indeed into the key spring sales in London in June for which the collecting cycle is generating rewarding and very exciting opportunity. Many thanks.

All the best.

Bye, bye.