Great. Thank you, Vent.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. With me here are Tad Smith, Sotheby's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Patrick McClymont, Chief Financial Officer.

GAAP refers to generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America. In this earnings call financial measures are presented in accordance with GAAP and also on an adjusted non-GAAP basis.

An explanation of the non-GAAP financial measures used in this earnings call, as well as reconciliations to the comparable GAAP amount are provided as an appendix to the earnings release, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of the company's Web site. Also 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 the 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. Please see our investor webpage for a slide presentation which outlines Sotheby's first quarter financial results.

With that, I will turn the call over to Tad.

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning. Thank you also for joining us this morning and for your interest in Sotheby's those of you who are on the call.

I am honored to lead our iconic global institution and very pleased to commence my first earnings call here. Before I begin, I would like to share my appreciation for my predecessor, Bill Ruprecht, and his exceptional service to our company.

The breadth, depth and quality of the relationships and organization has built over the years are extremely impressive and provide us with a strong foundation for future growth. His leadership and efforts have certainly made my task easier and I'm grateful to him.

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge and thank my new colleagues at Sotheby's for welcoming me warmly into the organization. I have been incredibly impressed with the level of talent within the company.

I'm energized by the opportunity to work with such a dedicated and passionate group of people. On a related topic, I'm very pleased to congratulate Jonathan Olsoff, who we just announced this morning will be taking on the role of Worldwide General Counsel and Corporate Secretary following a stellar 20-year career here at Sotheby's as General Counsel in the Americas, Assistant Corporate Secretary and leading the company's global litigation team.

My plan for this call is to give an update on what is underway right now in the second quarter and then to give some of my first impressions on the company, it's strategy and our future before turning the call to Patrick to review our first quarter financial results. So with that, we are currently in the midst of an exciting spring sales season.

Last week we held our May series of Impressionist & Modern Art here in New York, which yielded $420 million in total sales, highlighting the sales was the beautiful Vincent van Gogh that sold for $66 million. The sales also featured works from important American collections.

The Estate of Chicago businessman and philanthropist, Jerome H. Stone and the collection of Hollywood legends Samuel Goldman Sr., and Samuel Goldman Jr., including Pablo Picasso's portrait of his love, Françoise Gilot, that sold for $29.9 million.

Other highlights from the evening sale included five works by Monet totaling $115.4 million, his 1905 Nymphéas achieved a price of $54 million, the second-highest of the evening. Sotheby's four-day sales series in Hong Kong last month brought a combined total of $346 million, well above the presale low estimate of $303 million with over 2100 lots sold.

Also last month we had our magnificent jewels sale in New York which totaled $65 million, a record for jewelry sale at Sotheby's New York. 10 jewels sold for $1 million or more including four sold to online bidders.

Highlighting the sale was the extraordinary 100.20-carat perfect diamond in a classic emerald cut which sold for $22.1 million or over $220,000 per carat. Including this result only six perfect diamonds weighing over 100 carats have sold at auction in the last 25 years.

Sotheby's sold five of these spectacular diamonds including sales in Geneva, Hong Kong and now in New York. Following our market leading sales of old Master paintings in January Sotheby's New York sales of Weldon collection, a remarkable assemblage of Dutch and Flemish paintings amassed by the late Henry and June Jimmy Weldon over a period of several decades achieved a total of $22.2 million last month.

Tomorrow night in New York, we begin our Contemporary art sales series which carries a total presale low estimate of $380 million. Highlighting the sales is Roy Lichtenstein's 1962, comic book masterpiece, the Ring, Engagement, which comes from the collection of Chicago businessman and philanthropist, Stephan T.

Atlas, who purchased the work from Sotheby's in 1997. The painting has a presale estimate in the region of $50 million and is one of the most significant works by the artist to appear at auction.

Also included is Mark Rothko's untitled yellow and blue, which stands at over 8 feet tall and was once in the collection of Mr. and Mrs.

Paul Mellon and carries a presale estimate of $40 million to $60 million. Also on offer tomorrow but in Geneva is Sotheby's magnificent jewels and noble jewels sale, which is a presale estimate in excess of $88 million.

Leading the sale is the historic pink diamond, an extremely rare and highly important fancy vivid pink diamond of 8.27 carats alongside the Sunrise Ruby, a superb and extremely rare Burmese ruby weighing 25.59 carats and with outstanding depth of color. I like it like this, presented by our private sales gallery S2 in collaboration with Grammy-winning hip-hop icon Drake, is a celebration of 70 years of influential contemporary black American artist.

S2 London is delighted to present Henry Hudson's most recent and ambitious body of work in his largest solo exhibition to-date. The series is a modern-day interpretation of William Hogarth's 18th-century narrative, a Rake's progress, and includes large-scale plasticine paintings, original drawings and smaller studies, each depicting the various stages of the protagonist life in decline.

As you can see, we have a great deal underway at Sotheby's in the second quarter. Let me turn now to my first impressions of the business.

I have only been here for 41 days and they have been spent listening to our talented Sotheby's staff, our clients, our investors and key business partners in Hong Kong, London, Paris, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. I am encouraged that my priorities have not materially changed from the four that I announced on March 16, when I was appointed.

As a reminder, the four are as follows; first, Sotheby's needs a vibrant and compelling growth strategy. Second, Sotheby's needs to embrace technology more effectively both internally and through client facing products.

Third, Sotheby's must attract, develop and retain the talent within the organization as well as the processes to succeed. Fourth, Sotheby's needs to build on the productive path that Patrick and prior CEO, Bill Ruprecht began over a year ago to allocate capital more effectively and maximize shareholder value sustainably over time.

Let me turn to the first priority. The first priority, implementing a compelling growth strategy for Sotheby's has numerous elements.

First, it is worth pointing out that I very much like the markets in which Sotheby's does business. According to one recent report I read, there were over 170,000 people around the world with a net worth of more than $30 million in 2014 with a total wealth estimated at nearly $21 trillion.

The same report predicted that the global population of ultrahigh net worth individuals would grow 34% through 2024. Serving these discerning customers around the world begins with our brand, so our strategy was first to find an architecture for our company's brand as well as set and maintain standards of elegance and separate property across all we do.

The growth strategy will also address market share gaps within various specialist categories in ways that are appropriate for creating shareholder value. The strategy will broaden and deepen client relationships through fact-based research, better internal client retention, better matching of buyers to consignments globally, improving our consignments hedging strategies and ensuring that all of our marketing and events are consistent with our improved brand standards.

Our strategy must unleash the talent within the organization to enhance our sales force effectiveness and productivity, align our incentives internally, clarify accountabilities and responsibilities, make our sales approaches more transparent and streamline and bring innovation to our deal making processes. Our growth strategy should further find ways to build on our historical successes in private treaty sales through internal improvements and external alliances.

Last year we did $625 million in private sales, which seems an opportunity for improvement in a $35 billion estimated market. The middle-market of auction defined art continues to be a large area from which we generate substantial revenue and profits but where we believe the opportunity to grow remains very significant for us.

Sotheby's financial services is another area where we can expand and grow profitably through improved focus and attention. Our global growth strategy must seek opportunities to improve our position in attractive geographic markets and determine the right mixture of talent, capital and partnerships for success.

Our S2 gallery business has shown early successes as a lead generation vehicle and we must follow that up with a clear picture of how to expand the business with an eye on value creation and strategic positioning. With respect to strategic adjacencies our growth strategy must address how to achieve minimum efficient scale and sustainable competitive position in the right part of the value chain for areas such as jewelry, wine, cars, coins, memorabilia, collectibles and even appraisals.

We will be reviewing these areas beginning of the summer. The second priority that I mentioned early on will be to embrace technology more effectively both internally and through client facing products.

Over the past year, we have been cultivating relationships with many prospective partners in the technology space. One of these, eBay, has already yielded an important partnership for us.

Others will undoubtedly follow and fill out the range of our technology solutions for clients as well as strategic positions on which our shareholders can bank. Part of this effort involves auditing our internal systems and filling in gaps to enhance our market knowledge, client understanding and product information.

New talent with depth of experience in technology will help us drive our digital future. Finally, our current Digital Products will yield themselves to more experimentation in business models, innovation in the customer experience and enhanced usability while relentlessly adhering to brand excellence.

The third major priority is a necessary condition for success and that is to build the organization and processes that can sustain progress on the priorities themselves. Sotheby's as an organization requires very talented people with excellent values, a focus on client service and clear goals and incentives aligned with the shareholders.

Adding to our excellent talent base, especially in areas where we have gaps, is a top priority for me. Improving our people processes, performance reviews and accountabilities will also yield performance results.

Our organization can be simplified and flattened to bring top management very close to the needs and experiences of our clients at the same time we broadened the organization's scope and talent to fill in soft patches in areas of opportunity around the world. Fourth, a compelling corporate growth strategy that embraces innovation and has the talent, organization and procedures to win must have capital allocated well in order to proceed and so rigor and capital allocation is my fourth priority.

Real estate is one example. Our real estate decisions in New York and in London depend crucially on our growth strategy.

Our facilities must reflect our enhanced brand standards and the type of client experience we insist upon conveying. They must be elegant and welcoming and exude superb quality in every aspect of the client experience.

Further, our facilities must be designed for our 21st century workforce. And naturally, our real estate must be financed in a way that is prudent for our shareholders.

Properly conceived, our real estate should be a cornerstone of our strategy, just as it was when our esteemed former Chairman, Alfred Talman, set in motion the real estate position we have to this day. Real estate decisions separate and apart from mortgage decisions very much remain on the table and will be part of our strategic thinking.

Other aspects of our balance sheet such as the $700 million in loan assets from Sotheby's financial services, require that your management team constantly seek higher net interest margin and fees will managing risk to grow the small but very promising business. Our target 15% return on equity for our shareholders depends on innovation in funding these loans and our management team is committed to this.

From time to time Sotheby's also makes principal investments in art, jewelry and the like. Some of these are very short-term such as when we make guarantees to support the consignments of our agency business.

Others are opportunities when we make investments alone or with partners that we believe over time will produce risk-adjusted capital appreciation that exceeds our company's weighted average cost of capital. Perhaps there is an opportunity to expand these activities with partners, but your management is committed to pursuing them in such a way as to create enduring shareholder value.

Of course, there are also guarantees that we have made on consignments that do not perform in auctions the way we would have hoped, with the result being that our company finds a loss on our balance sheet. We will inevitably make mistakes from time to time.

Nevertheless, we are committed to making every effort to hedge these risks through partners to ensure that our shareholders' money is well deployed to generate a return. We will not roll dice in the auction room with shareholders' money.

At the same time, guarantees on high profile trophy lots can be important marketing investments and potentially generate positive momentum and product scope within certain art categories. Strategy, opportunity, judgment and sensible risk management will guide our use of these guarantees.

Separately, having cash pile up on the balance sheet is hard to justify unless needed for strategic investments, working capital, emergency liquidity reserves or capital investments on things such as technology upgrades. The same is true of unused debt capacity, which in light of our high cost of equity, should also be viewed as expensive to leave untapped.

In February our Board placed our capital return program on-hold pending the arrival of the CEO and now that I'm here the Board is comfortable letting investors know that the company may repurchase shares at any time under the remaining $125 million share repurchase authorization. However, and this is crucial, management and the Board are early in reviewing the company's many growth options in this review will play out over a number of months.

Any share repurchases under this existing authorization will be secondary to the requirements of our company's longer-term growth needs and also take into account market conditions. So those are the four priorities announced on March 16, leavened with 41 days of listening and asking questions.

We will continue to refine our thinking even as we get on about implementing some of the more obvious needed changes. With that, I will turn the call over to my colleague Patrick who will review the first quarter results.

Thank you, Ted. More often than not the first quarter is a loss quarter for Sotheby's, thanks to the buyers premium increase instituted earlier this year and some excellent deal execution along with continued attention to cost.

This quarter delivered a nice profit. Turning to the detailed financial information on Slide 3 of the presentation deck and beginning with our overall results, with a healthy global art market, increased sales worldwide and improved commission margins, we achieved 127% increase in adjusted operating income in the first quarter of 2015.

The first quarter 2015 adjusted net income is $7.4 million and adjusted diluted EPS is $0.11 per share compared to an adjusted net loss of $3 million and adjusted loss per share of $0.04 a year ago. The adjusted operating net income figures exclude restructuring and special charges as well as CEO separation and transition cost.

Now let's look at each of our main operating segments. Starting with the agency segment on Slide 4, we continue to see growing revenues on strong auction sales.

In the first quarter agency gross profit increased $3.3 million or 3% to $112.8 million and $8.3 million or 8% increase in auction commission revenues resulted from an improvement in auction commission margins and an increase in net auction sales during the quarter. Excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rate sales, auction commission revenues increased $15.2 million or 15% over the prior quarter.

Auction commission margin increased from 14.3% to 15% in the quarter, primarily due to the increase in the buyers' premium rate structure effective as of the 1st of February and a lower level of buyers premium shared with consignors. This is partially offset by sales mix as a higher proportion of net auction sales in the first quarter occurred in the higher price bands of Sotheby's buyers premium rate structure than in the prior period.

Offsetting the gains in auction commission revenues, private sales commissions decreased $1.6 million or 12% in the first quarter of 2015 as compared to the prior year, due to a lower volume of high-value transactions completed when compared to the first quarter of 2014. The unfavorable variance in Sotheby's auction guarantee and inventory activities compared to the prior period is primarily due to the higher level of inventory write-downs and a lower level of gains associated with guaranteed property offered at auction.

Agency direct costs increased $1.4 million or 13% in the quarter, primarily due to higher level of cost incurred to promote and conduct Sotheby's contemporary art sales in London including the single owner Bear Witness sale. Turning to Slide 5, you'll see a decrease in principal revenues and cost of principal revenues in the first quarter.

In the first quarter of 2014, we had sales of property acquired from a potential consignor in lieu of the agency segment providing an auction guarantee. There was no comparable event in the current period.

Moving to Slide 6, we are pleased with the growth of Sotheby's financial services and our ongoing process of debt funding this business. The finance segment average loan portfolio balance for the first quarter of 2015 was $678 million, a 41% increase from the prior period.

Finance segment revenues increased $7 million or 78% in the quarter, reflecting the growth of the portfolio. Finance segment gross profit, which is net of borrowing costs, increased $4.3 million or 53% in the quarter.

Finance segment results in the current period were also favorably impacted by $1.3 million collateral withdrawal fee earned in the period. Withdrawal fees are not common.

As previously announced, we have established a separate capital structure for the finance segment that provides for the debt funding of loans through a dedicated revolving credit facility. Debt funding the loan portfolio reduces the finance segment's cost of capital and enhances returns.

Beginning this quarter, we are disclosing the finance segment's return on equity, which is 10.9% for the 12 months ending March 31, 2015. As we define it, the finance segment's LTM return on equity is its net income over the last 12 months excluding allocated corporate overhead costs in relation to the average equity in our loan portfolio during that period.

Assuming our current average leverage of 72%, the LTM, return on equity would have been 13.6%. Next on Slide 7, salaries and related costs decreased $2.8 million or 4% in the first quarter as compared to the first quarter a year ago.

Changes in foreign currency exchange rates reduced salaries and related cost by $3.3 million when compared to the prior period. Excluding this impact salaries and related costs increased $500,000 or 1% during the current period.

For the first quarter of 2015 full-time salaries decreased $1.1 million or 3%, principally due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates of $1.9 million and savings resulting from the restructuring plan enacted in July of 2014, partially offset by base salary increases and headcount reinvestments. Excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rate changes, full-time salaries increased $800,000 or 2% during the current period.

Incentive compensation expense decreased $1.2 million or 40% due to lower private sale incentive cost resulting from a decline in private selling activity. Employee benefit costs increased $2.2 million or 33% in the first quarter, primarily due to a $900,000 increase in non-restructuring related severance costs as well as higher pension costs in U.K.

and U.S. For the year ending December 31, 2015, the net cost associated with the U.K.

defined benefit plan is expected to increase $2.3 million, primarily due to a decrease in the assumption for the weighted average expected long-term rate of return on client assets from 6.1% to 5.4% and an increase in required amortization of prior-year actuarial losses. Turning to Slide 8, general and administrative expenses improved $2.6 million or 7% in the first quarter of 2015.

Changes in foreign currency exchange rates reduced G&A cost by $1.5 million when compared to the prior period. Excluding this impact, general and administrative expenses decreased $1.1 million or 3% during the current period.

Professional fees improved $2 million or 15% in the quarter, largely attributable to lower legal and compliance expense, which is $800,000 of the decrease and lower operations expenses $600,000 of the decrease, primarily due to negotiated rate reductions related to certain outsourced functions such as catalog production and the client contact management center as well as reduced usage of service providers in other areas. For the first quarter, Sotheby's effective income tax rate was approximately 50%.

The income tax rate for the current quarter is higher than the 2015 estimated annual effective income tax rate of 36% due to a discrete tax expense of $1 million related to the expected results of income tax audits. In the prior period income tax expense of $300,000 was recorded on a pretax loss of $5.7 million, primarily as a result of a $3.1 million income tax charge recorded in the prior-year quarter related to the enactment of new legislation in New York State.

As Ted mentioned earlier in this call, we have initiated a broad strategic review of Sotheby's business. As a result management is reevaluating its expense projections for 2015 and is withdrawing expense guidance at this time.

On a final note, we just want to remind you that our summer London contemporary sales are being held on July 1 and 2, instead at the end of June, as they have been historically. Therefore, those will be third quarter events this year instead of second quarter events.

This concludes our comments on today's announcements and we would be happy to address your questions.

Hi. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my question. And congratulations on the commission margin improving.

The question is really, Tad, as you described the opportunities there for margin and looking at that business and measuring it, that versus the competitive environment – if you could lay out those two and how they were juxtaposed in the quarter and really what you think the opportunity is to have control of your margin over time versus the outside factors that affected on that commission line?

Too soon to say, David. We're going through the peak portion of the spring right now and I'm studying it carefully.

So it is a very good question and one, I'm going to be very focused on. I will say, though, that the animating focus I have is return on invested capital, for what it's worth.

That's helpful. You talked about, just as a quick follow-up, you talked about accountability and performance review improvement.

If you could just expand on that Tad a little bit, how you think about that?

Yes. I think it's critically important when you look at an organization that essentially really has three activities going on inside of it.

One is a deep understanding of either art or jewelry, whatever the substance various such as wine might be, and call it specialists or experts. Secondly, you have effectively a sales force or business development team.

And third, you have support functions around that. And by the way, there are lots of hybrids between the first two groups, for what it's worth, because clearly the experts and specialists interact directly with clients and in fact they often have clients.

But in any like that, every single individual in that organization – in our organization needs to know precisely what it is that they are trying to accomplish, exactly what the goals are, both measurable and also frequently qualitative and they need to be concrete, they need to understand exactly what their accountabilities are and to whom and what the level of responsibilities are in order to effect that. And in a complex and creative organization like this one, if there's any sort of lack of clarity around any of those things, you can end up with a suboptimal result.

Moreover, the incentives themselves need to be highly aligned with the shareholders' needs. And thinking that through creatively with a keen and also a very sort of clear perspective on what the shareholders looking for is a top priority for us.

I am optimistic.

That's very helpful. Thanks again.

Thank you. Tad, welcome.

Thank you.

So you mentioned a $35 billion private treaty market worldwide and that is not a number I heard before. So I'm wondering where that number comes from.

I'm also wondering how aggressive you could ultimately be in that category or that segment. And I refer a group hires, M&A, just curious of your thoughts there.

The number comes from [T fab] [ph], Jerry Katzman found it for me. And of course a significant portion of that is in the primary market and you could debate whether we should be or could be in the primary market, even though with S2 right now with the Henry Hudson we already have an example of where we are.

So the addressable portion of that, again, is subject to debate and will be further fleshed out in the strategy. With respect to the second portion, in terms of alliances there, it's really too soon to say.

There are clearly interesting opportunities for us to think about partnering with various groups because significant areas of that part of the market are consolidating and turning into large branded dealers around the world. And it's an interesting question – too soon to say, though.

Okay. Relative to finance, I'm curious have you made any changes relative to credit standards?

Traditionally you had lent up to 50% of low estimated value. Is that a similar kind of occurrence today?

And I'm curious how large you are comfortable building a loan balance to be.

George, its Patrick. I will take that one.

No, there's no change in how we think about underwriting the risk. We can borrow -- a qualifying loan can be up to 60% loan to value in terms of our ability to fund that asset.

And so typically you will see our loans right around 50%, but they can go as high as 60%. And there's really no change in terms of our process or thoughts around underwriting the risk.

In terms of growth, we'll see. We have obviously been growing the business rapidly over the last couple of years.

That is given us the flexibility to add some resources to the business in terms of client facing people and transaction processors. And so we've got high expectations for the business.

As we've discussed on these calls, we believe that the loan economics themselves are compelling and obviously it provides an engine of property for the auction side of the business. And so our goal is to continue the growth.

And we are not really clear on what the ceiling could be for this business.

Okay, great. And lastly for me, Patrick, relative to the Q1 improved auction margin results, if we were to think through percentages, how much of that improvement was driven by the auction changes you made earlier in the quarter or the price changes you made earlier in the quarter?

We never talk about sort of percentages in terms of what drives the change in auction commission margin. We always talk about the factors and the things that matter are mix, and certainly mix was meaningful in this quarter.

We talk about how sharing of commissions has an impact on it. And in this instant yes, the increase in the buyers premium certainly had an impact on it.

So we don't really give specifics on that, but certainly all those factors mattered this quarter.

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Hi, everybody thanks for the great details, Tad and Patrick. Tad, as you spoke to simplifying and flattening the organization, could you elaborate how that may manifest and also how you balance that potential strategy against ensuring that you are procuring the best lots possible in a competitive environment that hasn't necessarily become easier?

And Patrick, I had a question. On one of your comments you said there has been higher levels of inventory write-downs.

Is that a trend which you may expect to continue or is that a non-recurring event this past quarter? Thank you.

Oliver, with respect to the management item, I would just say one of the things that I've observed here and also in similar organizations, and I'll give you some examples in a minute, is that when you have an extraordinarily talented and autonomous group of people interacting with clients, the more layers that they have to deal with in order to get sort of client service effectuated between them and someone who can approve a particular transaction, often the more frustrating and more complicated it can be. So what I would like as an organization that is very flexible, very lean and can make decisions quickly and also sensibly for the shareholders that's one and also, frankly, for the clients.

That's one where I don't think it makes -- I think it's generally better that the top management here is very close to the clients and there's not a significant number of process steps or layers in between, for what it's worth.

And Tad, this is a bigger picture question. But with regards to inventory procurement and as you think about technology and the different field from which you came from, do you expect a business model to change in terms of how you think about acquiring inventory or will, the standards of the 4 D's kind of the principles that apply on a long-term basis as well?

I just want to clarify, Oliver, before Tad answers, when you say acquire inventory, you're really just talking about winning consignments, correct?

Exactly, on the agency side.

Again, too soon to say. Certainly the 4 D's are where I see the opportunity now.

But I hinted, I think, in my remarks that we could think about taking a longer-term view on specific not necessarily consignments but positions and potentially with partners.

Thank you. And Patrick, I had that question.

Sure, sure. I don't think there's any trend that you could look to in terms of the inventory write-downs.

We go through a process where we look at all of our inventory, whether it's on the agency side or the principal side, think about what fair market value is. We do put a lot of effort into making sure that we identify opportunities to sell property that's currently in inventory either privately or identify upcoming auctions.

And so we try to be very disciplined about that. But there's nothing that I would point to as a trendsetting from this first quarter.

Okay. And just a final question, Tad, you mentioned comments on our prepared remarks about the middle-market opportunity.

It does sound like a really nice opportunity in a big addressable market. So how should we think about how you are going to preserve the very pristine nature of the brand and balancing that against thinking about broadening some of the appeal as you think about middle-market?

It's a very good question. I'll point out Oliver, already do a substantial amount of middle market business now under our current brand.

And it seems to have no deleterious effect. However, to think about how to grow it dramatically we need to think about precisely what is the service level we provide in those categories, where are we on the cost curve and what is our differentiator.

All of those are TBD.

Okay. Best regards.

Thanks so much.

Thanks Oliver.

Thanks Oliver.

Good morning. First, the question for you, Tad, as you have been out talking to clients, investors and staff, what were the primary concerns or can you share some of the feedback, your takeaways from the meetings with them?

First of all, good morning, Kristine. Thanks for the question.

Overwhelmingly, by the way, our clients say tremendous things about us. They say that they clearly love our understanding of and depth and appreciate our depth of understanding of both art and jewelry.

They think we have a great deal of expertise. They think we also are very trustworthy.

They think we are confident. They enjoy spending time with us.

There are tremendous positives. In areas where they think we have improvement opportunities, it's things that are very encouraging in the sense that they are very fixable.

They are in things like turnaround time, they are in some client service hygiene things; they are in a bit of financial flexibility stuff. It's process improvement and that stuff, management opportunities that I'm very encouraged by because what I hear is the clients and the collectors are seeing very strong things about the stuff that's hard to fix and they are saying please fix a few of the things that require effort but they are much more – they are very fixable.

Okay. That's good to hear.

And then, as you look at the business globally, where do you think the biggest opportunity is for growth on a regional basis?

Again, this one also too soon to say, but I can give you a little bit of a framework to think about it. If one thinks about where wealth is being created, in various parts of Asia and various parts of the Middle East and essentially in various parts of the Americas and South of our border and where we are rate both in terms of collectors and staff and whether art or jewelry sales, my suggestion is that there is a bit of an imbalance.

We have significant areas of client development in areas where there is relatively slower growing, a la Europe and North America, and wealth creation over the next decade. In my fond hope and, moreover, my sort of commitment is to balance that out and find new markets to put more resources into.

I would be surprised if a year or two down the road looking backward we wouldn't have a more significant commitment to South Asia, to the Middle East and to potentially the Americas south of the border of the United States.

Okay. And then lastly, as far as some of your initiatives or priorities, I know the company has invested in technology over the past decade or so and have a pretty deep, from what I recall, pretty deep database on your clients.

Just wondering are additional technology upgrade investments needed? When I say additional, anything significant or is it just a matter of mining the database that you currently have to really build the client relationships and get to know the clients better?

Yes. It's a great question.

When you look at our client system, what you see is that we have a robust technology platform and a lot of data in it on clients. And it's reasonably [fassle] [ph] to use, which is encouraging.

But I don't know, for example, because I haven't seen an audit, how accurate the stuff is in it. And that would certainly be a first place.

And the second thing where I think that we are a little bit softer is in what I would call information on products or information on things that go through our auction houses rather than the client who serve them. And so moreover, the third area would be how we connect the two of those would be an area of opportunity in my mind.

And so that's where I think we would see some effort applied to make the system better. Also there's some fundamental usability things which I again are in the category of technology hygiene, making sure that when you use a system it suggest things that you might not have thought of that are close to it, it's little stuff like that, but very encouraging on that generally.

Okay. Great.

Thank you.

I just want to say thank you all for joining the call. Thank you to my colleagues who prepared the quarterly stuff and Jennifer, and you all have a great day.