Great. Thank you, Brian.

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 reconciliation to the comparable GAAP amount is 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 second quarter financial results.

Now, I will turn the call over to Tad.

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning everybody. We appreciate you joining us this morning and for your interest in Sotheby's.

We have just completed two days of meetings with the Sotheby's board, so my plan for today is to provide a progress report on our strategic plan before turning things over to Patrick to review the second quarter financial results in detail. Before diving into our strategic work, a few words on some recent developments at Sotheby's.

Our London summer sales led the market in all categories and brought over $650 million and 25,000 visitors to our New Bond Street galleries during June and July, an unprecedented 11 lots sold for prices over 10 million pounds during the summer season. The Impressionist & Modern Art sales totaled $328 million, achieved four auction records and saw the highest price of the season with Gustav Klimt's beautiful portrait of Gertrud Loew selling for almost 25 million pounds.

The Contemporary Art series totaled $232 million, our highest total ever for a series of Contemporary Art sales in London with Andy Warhol’s first ever dollar painting selling for an almost 21 million pounds. Old Master’s brought a combined $99 million and established nine new records of auction.

Highlighting the sales there with Lucas cranach the elder, The Mouth of Truth which sold for a record 9.3 million pounds. While my colleague Patrick will take you through our financial results in detail, I would like to pause for a moment to acknowledge the rather bumpy quarter which closed at the end of June, largely the result of a combination of sales timing issues as well as a cancelled sale provision and the cost of a client authenticity claim, both related to properties sold in prior years.

Looking ahead, I’m pleased to announce that our Board has increased our total share repurchase authorization from $125 million to $250 million meaning increasing it by $125 million to $250 million. We will repurchase $125 million of Sotheby's common stock from shareholders in the near term by an accelerated share repurchase program.

We will fund that accelerated share repurchase program from current cash balances. We are by the way continuing our strategic review but have nevertheless concluded that additional capital maybe prudently returned to shareholders at this time as is reflected by our accelerated share repurchase program.

Turning to the vision and path forward to Sotheby's, our vision is to be the world’s preeminent destination to discover, experience and trade value to objects. Our vision is enduring.

By contrast, a company’s strategy is a dynamic thing that results from an ongoing process of developing hypothesis gathering facts, testing the hypothesis, measuring the outcome and revising the hypothesis. As such, the strategy will be constantly revised and improved upon even as it is being implemented and I am committed to keeping shareholders updated on our process.

I will now take you through the key themes and add as much details I can at this stage. First, Sotheby's will strengthen its position at the high end of fine art transactions around the world.

Sotheby's and its main competitor have the majority of the share of the fine art auction business in lots of over $1 million in value currently. Growth in these high value lots is with the market overall and with share shifts.

Our focus is on the largest and growing category of Contemporary Art as well as our many traditionally strong categories. We’ve been recruiting talent as well as exploring bolder ideas designed substantially and prove our performance in Contemporary.

We are also very focused on improving our position in private sales in lots over $1 million in value as we know that our share of what we estimate as $20 billion to $25 billion addressable private sale market is currently quite low. In both auction and private sales, we will also pursue new opportunities by improving our geographic scope in various underserved areas in the United States and around the world.

A review of ultrahigh net worth individuals and our client list shows that our allocation of resources is not perfectly aligned with our potential clients. We will fix this.

Number two, Sotheby's will use its brand to enhance its growth profile in categories such as jewelry, automobiles, wine, collectibles, financial services and in subsequent years potentially more aligned with business. Sotheby's is already a significant player in a very large and global jewelry business both as an auctioneer and also as by appointment retail experience.

We will expand the parts of the market we are already in as we continue our view in other parts of the jewelry value chain. Sotheby's is already in the car business through a minority position with RM Sotheby's and the initial results have been favorable.

RM Sotheby's 2015 sales are up 29% year-to-date and we are actively pursuing cross selling opportunities between the two organizations. We like the collectible car business and would consider expanding it.

Sotheby's Financial Services business is a business that has been growing rapidly with a 30% increase in the loan portfolio to $774 million at the end of June when compared to the same time last year. The business is well placed for further growth following an agreement in mid-June to increase its dedicated revolving credit facility by $485 million to just over $1 billion.

We remain focused on a plan to capture the most shareholder value from this business while remaining committed to prudent risk management. Sotheby's has a small position in wine but we have a number of hypothesis about this business in how it might be growing and will turn to these and other opportunities in 2016.

Number three, Sotheby's will deepen its client reach into the world’s growing population of the very wealthy both through better service in our existing businesses and by offering a greater selection of more accessibly priced items in what we call the middle market with prices from $25,000 to $1 million. This is already the source of up to half of our annual revenue.

So it is a business we know very well. At the same time, this middle market is an area of business that often gets inadequate focus at Sotheby's as we traditionally allocate resources to pursue and execute on very high value lots.

We believe that the middle market is an attractive opportunity for our business and we will find it cost effectively to grow including some basic improvements in process, marketing, event development and cost management combined with transformative efforts through partnerships or acquisitions. Number four, Sotheby's will further the revolutionary ***03*** {***4-7***} Number four, Sotheby's will further the revolutionary work begun in the 1980s by Alfred Talman to effect a transition from our company as a business-to-business company to a high-end client service company.

As part of this, Sotheby's will reinforce its client-first mentality and ensure that every touch point for clients is consistent with our desired brand attributes of elegance, trust and service. To achieve this, we’ve began a review of how the Sotheby's brand should be translated into our facilities, especially in New York and this will continue into 2016.

Number five, Sotheby's clients are discerning users of technology and our company must provide the best client service experience using internal and external technologies. As I mentioned on our call last quarter, we are exploring partnerships around the world with compatible companies and individuals to succeed with this strategy.

Finally, an essential element of funding this strategy is to avoid waste wherever possible and to ensure that capital is allocated exclusively to activities that have clear client value or shareholder value. Our costs must be minimized wherever neither the client or the shareholders receiving value and our prices should be at a level that reflects the very real value that our clients receive from Sotheby's.

We are already seeing an increase in our clients’ appetite to engage with us online. In the first half of this year, we saw nearly 49% increase in the number of online bidders in our auctions, which translated in a nearly 38% increase in the value of successful bids and this was across sales rooms and categories.

Cost reduction, pricing excellence, and balance sheet management are not so much parts of a strategy as they’re essential enabling factors of good strategy, but these are critically important areas of focus because our resources are not unlimited. Ensuring that the organization is extremely careful with shareholders’ money we’ll boost returns, enhanced value and increase credibility with investors to pursue even more ambitious strategies to enhance shareholder value.

There are three parts to this. First, the company is developing a plan to reduce waste and meaningful parts of our cost structure.

Second, the company will charge appropriately for this service it provides and this will be rolled out for 2016. Third, the company must have a plan one that emphasizes prudence that does not allow unneeded capital to accumulate on the balance sheet and that is why we’ve announced additional capital returns.

The most important part of our strategy is to develop the winning team that has the values, energy, talent motivation incentives and rewards to implement and sustain this strategy. There are numerous elements to this part of the plan.

First, we’ve been working on an organizational plan as well as internal and external recruiting efforts to fill key slots and we’re making good progress. Second, with our compensation committee we’ve begun a review of how we align incentive compensation with performance far more effectively.

Third we have a number of training initiatives begun in the autumn of 2014, which will enhance our efforts to create a client-centric organization. Those are the key themes of the strategy reviewed with the board over the past few days.

We’ve made a lot of progress since in the past four months but there’s an incredible amount of work to be done. We look forward to sharing more detail with you in the coming months.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to Patrick.

Thank you Tad. I’ll use the slide presentation we published this morning for my comments.

Please turn to slide 3 of that deck. Second quarter 2015 adjusted net income is $73.1 million and adjusted diluted earnings per share is $1.04 per share.

This compares to $87.8 million and $1.26 per share respectively a year ago. For the half, adjusted net income is $80.5 million and adjusted diluted earnings per share is $1.15 compared to $84.9 million and $1.20 respectively in last year’s first half.

The adjusted net income and adjusted EPS figures exclude restructuring and special charges, as well as CEO separation and leadership transition costs. Now, let's look at each of our main operating segments.

Starting with the Agency segment on slide 4, gross profit declined $19.6 million or 7% and $16.5 million or 4% in the second quarter and year-to-date periods, respectively, in large part due to a lower level of auction commission revenues due to a shift in the timing of the London Contemporary evening sale, as well as unfavorable movements in foreign currency exchange rates. The shift in the timing of the London Contemporary evening sale, which totaled $137.4 million in the second quarter of last year drove an overall decrease in net auction sales of $114.7 million or 6% and $93.2 million or 3% in the second quarter and year-to-date periods, respectively.

In 2015, the comparable sale was held in the third quarter and totaled approximately $177.3 million. Unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates contributed $11.3 million in the quarter and $18.2 million in the half to the overall decreases in auction commission revenues.

Excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rate changes, auction commission revenues were flat in the quarter and increased $14.8 million or 4% in the half. Somewhat offsetting the overall decrease in auction commission revenues is an improvement in auction commission margin from 15.2% in the second quarter of 2014 to 15.5% in the second quarter of 2015, largely due to increased buyer’s premium rate structure enacted earlier this year, partially offset by a higher level of shared auction commissions and a change in sales mix as higher value property was sold in the upper price bands of Sotheby's buyer’s premium rate structure.

Also significantly contributing to the decline in Agency segment gross profit is a loss incurred on a painting acquired by Sotheby's earlier in the year and sold at auction during the second quarter. This painting was acquired along with another painting that was sold at the same auction for an offsetting profit, which will be recognized later in the year when payment is received and title passes to the buyer.

The overall deal was profitable, but we take the loss side now and the gain later. Partially offsetting the lower level of agency segment gross profit are increases in private sale commissions of $5.4 million, 32% and $3.8 million or 13% respectively in the second quarter and year-to-date periods due to an increase in the volume of high-value transactions completed.

Moving to slide 5, we are pleased with the growth of Sotheby's Financial Services and our ongoing process of debt funding this business. At the end of June, the loan portfolio balance was $774 million, a 30% increase from the prior-year and credit facility borrowings were $593 million, resulting in a leverage ratio of approximately 77%.

In mid-June, Sotheby's credit agreement was amended to increase the borrowing capacity of the finance segments dedicated revolving credit facility by $485 million to just over $1 billion in order to support the continued growth of the finance segment’s loan portfolio. Finance segment revenues increased $4 million or 32% in the quarter and $11 million or 52% in the half reflecting the growth of the portfolio.

Finance segment gross profit, which is net of borrowing costs, increased $2.1 million or 21% in the quarter and $6.5 million or 35% in the half. Finance segment results in the first half were also favorably impacted by $1.3 million collateral withdrawal fee earned in the first quarter.

Withdrawal fees are not common. Last quarter, we began disclosing the finance segment's return on equity, which is 12.3% for the current last 12-month period ending June 30, 2015.

Assuming our current average leverage of 76.6%, the LTM, return on equity would have been 16.6%, which is above our previously disclosed 15% target. Excluding withdrawal fees and assuming our current leverage of 76.6%, the LTM return on equity would be 15.9%.

Next, on slide 6, salaries and related costs increased $10.3 million or 11% in the second quarter and $7.5 million or 5% in the first six months as compared to a year ago. Excluding foreign exchange impact, salaries and related costs increased $15.5 million or 16% during the quarter and $16 million or 10% in the half.

This increase is significantly impacted by leadership transition severance costs of $9.5 million incurred in association with the termination of the employment of certain executive officers, including our Chief Operating Officer. Excluding these costs, salaries and related would have been largely flat in both periods as compared to the prior-year.

Full-time salaries decreased $1.3 million or 3% in the second quarter and $2.4 million or 3% in the first six months, principally due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates, $2.1 million and $4 million respectively and savings resulting from the restructuring plan enacted in July 2014, partially offset by base salary increases and headcount reinvestments. Overall, Sotheby's headcount has remained flat during the past 12 months.

Excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rates full-time salaries increased $800,000 or 2% and $1.5 million or 2% for the three and six months ended June 30, 2015. For the three and six months ended June 30, 2015, share-based payment expense increased $2.9 million or 44% and $2.3 million or 18% respectively, largely due to the accelerated recognition of $2.19 million of compensation expense in the second quarter of 2015, related to the terms of the severance agreement with Sotheby’s Chief Operating Officer and higher amortization of CEO share-based payment awards.

Turning to slide 7, general and administrative expenses increased $6.5 million or 17% in the second quarter of 2015 and $3.9 million or 5% in the first six months. Excluding foreign exchange impact, general and administrative expenses increased $8.9 million or 23% during the quarter and $7.8 million or 10% in the first half.

These increases are almost entirely due to a $6.9 million increase in other indirect expenses, during the second quarter, primarily due to a significant charge related to an unexpected authenticity claim related to property sold several years ago. Income tax expense, Sotheby’s effective income tax for the three and six months ended June 30, 2015 was approximately 40%, compared to an effective income tax rate of approximately 37% and 39% for the same periods in the prior year.

As of June 30, 2015 we estimate that Sotheby’s annual effective income tax rate, excluding discreet items will be approximately 35%. This is lower than what we have previously guided to primarily because of a reduction in state and local taxes as a result of legislation enacted during the current quarter and to a lesser extent a change in the jurisdictional mix of Sotheby’s pre-tax income.

The effective income tax rates for the current periods are higher than what we estimate for 2015, as well as compared to the prior year, primarily due to a discrete tax expense of approximately $4 million recorded in the second quarter to reflect the impact of New York tax legislation passed during the period. Third quarter of 2015, as you know, the third quarter at Sotheby’s is seasonally slow period with just a handful of important sales.

Contemporary and old Master’s in London in July and Asia week in New York in September along with just a few sales across other categories. With the main London results now behind us we can say that we expect third-quarter adjusted operating results to be similar to the third quarter a year ago.

We do have the addition of the contemporary evening sale this year, which was a typically low margin contemporary auction. However, we have seen weaker sales results in this quarter and other categories that typically have higher margins including old masters.

Of course final results will depend on the remaining sales in the quarter, including New York Asia week and a few others. This concludes our comments on today’s announcements and we would be happy to address your questions.

Hi good morning guys. This is Jason on for George Sutton.

Tad you talked in your growth strategy comments that your objectives included re-aligning global resources, the client first approach and certain events and marketing tailored to the midmarket and I’m just wondering if you can contrast that with your commentary that you are focused on minimizing expenses and cutting costs and how you’re thinking about balancing those two?

I think that there are really is right now in our cost structure that we - that are a bit too high and we will be addressing those reasonably soon and there are other areas where I think we can apply some resources and generate a higher revenue and a higher profit and it’s going to be a balance.

Okay. And then just on the private sales in the quarter you experienced a nice uptick in some of the high-value transactions, we haven’t seen that for a number of quarters and I’m just wondering if there is anything unique there or are you guys doing anything differently, doing any different marketing or if this is just kind of the cycles of the business?

Well it’s certainly is the cycles of the business and it does not reflect any new initiatives related to private sales.

Okay, thank you.

Hi good morning. Could you update us on your view of the global cycle geographies and then within that - the competitive environment to attract sellers?

Sure. Well I think what you are seeing around the world and then I am going to take the liberty to dive into China more specifically since that’s an area of great interest I think.

Is that, the overall sales numbers continue to be strong and if you look a bit more closely at the auctions what you see is that the population of buyers is very discerning, quality is continuing to sell at very high prices and things that are not as high quality are finding a little bit rougher road and if you look particularly at China, it faceting, what we - if you look at the period through July 1 and I say July 1 because that’s of course when we have the contemporary sale versus the same period last year in the first half, what you would see is that the overall volume of by hammer [ph] among clients based in greater China, including Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as the Mainland grew substantially for us. In fact the buyer hammer was up 63% during that period, but interestingly it shifted.

What you saw is that in London and New York there was very, very substantial buying and in Beijing and Hong Kong you saw it a bit softer. So when you step back you saw it’s a nuance picture, and what I mean by that is there are clearly buyers in China that are viewing this as an exciting any sort of slowdown in parts of the market as a very exciting buying opportunity and there are others that are going to be a bit discerning.

Overall though quality is still selling very well, and interestingly as you look towards the early picture of what the fall sales look like, the pipeline of high quality are at a very early place in where we are looking at it now, looks pretty robust to us. I think I answered all of them, but was there, did I miss one.

No know that is great. You went to China in the fall, without me.

That was perfect. Thank you.

Yes.

Good morning this is Chad Sutherland on for Taposh, hoping to better understand the two paintings that were acquired the one in which was auctioned for a loss, I guess how big of an impact did that have on the quarter?

Well if you look at slide 4, where we go through inventory sales and then you also see cost of inventory sales and that meaningful uptick in cost of inventory sales, reflects the fact that during the quarter, so both paintings sold the one that sold at below costs that gets reflected during the quarter as cost of inventory sales, but later on when we actually transfer title on both that picture and then also don’t look gained that’s when we recognize the revenue side of the equation. And so that’s the biggest driver of that increase from $5 million to $15 million.

Okay, that’s helpful, thank you. And then just a follow-up on the kind of capital allocation and the review of the business has that entirely concluded now with the announcement of the repurchase program and the ASR are or is there more to do, will you be looking at real estate?

Yes, well it, there are two elements to that in your question, if I understand it, one is has capital return concluded and two is, has the strategic review concluded? And the answer, on the strategic review is no.

I mean the whole notion of it is, in fact there were several points when I was going through where I said and will turn to this in 2016 for example with wine and I think I also mentioned specifically with respect to making sure that our facilities especially that in New York is up to our brand standard also will drift into 2016 and also some elements of the strategy related to branding and other things would drift into 2016. We have a huge chunk of the strategy done and we’re implementing that and there are some other things that we’re going to be reviewing.

I think, in addition for example I mentioned that there were several parts of the value chain of jewelry that were outside the scope of the comments I made with respect to our strategic plan there that we’re going to be reviewing subsequently even as we begin to implement changes in those parts of the jewelry value chain that we’ve already looked at. So this will be a dynamic process.

With respect to capital returns, I would say that - I’ll just reemphasize what I said several minutes ago, which is the Board reviewed it, the strategy is continuing and we thought that at this point based upon what we saw it was prudent to do the capital return program that we announced today and also the portion of it that was accelerated that we announced today. But we have a general point of view here that we think the capital allocation is a key part of what we are going to be doing.

We will be doing the best element – we’re going to be practicing that at best practices for shareholder value.

Great. Thank you and good luck.

Thanks.

Hi, thanks a lot. It seems like the most detail we’ve gotten thus far with respect to the strategic opportunities ahead, so I appreciate that.

Tad, I have a question related to the brand translation into the facilities. I am just curious about some ideas about what you mean there?

And then also what are your thoughts on how you may or may not use M&A in terms of how these different strategies involve? And then thirdly, you did have a number of different opportunities within kind of somewhat different strategic filters whether it be clients or whether it be categories, whether it be [indiscernible] wealth graphics.

So how do we think about this with respect to timing and impact if there is a way to prioritize how you see the bigger opportunities and the sooner versus later? Could you give us some initial help as we look at our model?

Thanks.

It was lot, so let me go through the pieces and if I miss one please jump in and correct me. With respect to the specifics on the strategy, thank you, I appreciate that.

The point I’ll make there is as you can imagine it’s a balance. I would like to be as clear and transparent with our investor community as I can on the strategy but the same time their disadvantages in telegraphing every element of our strategy and so I have to be a bit nuance.

I appreciate your forbearance. With respect to the real estate, what I mean there when I connect the brand to the real estate is, when one enters a building any Sotheby's building around the world, I want every element of what you see, how you’re treated, what you do, every element to reflect the elegance of our brand.

And one of the great things I think that was done with this company in the 80s and 90s and under the prior management brilliantly done was, they took a company which was largely as business-to-business company, a dealer based company and they brought it into a business-to-consumer very high end company. There are some elements of that, that haven’t fully been translated, maybe elegance of the experience.

And when you walk into a luxury retail outlet, you get one type of experience and when you walk in over here, sometimes you can get a different one. And so thinking through how we have all of the customer facing elements whether they are online, in person in our facilities reflect that, reflect the elegance of what our brand is about, is to me tremendously important.

And by the way, it could be as simple as waiting times, it could be as simple as what you experience, it could be as simple as the greeting that you receive, it’s every element of that that I think needs to be taught through. And that’s part of that and crucial part of that by the way is real estate and not just the choices but also the look, the feel, everything about it.

With respect to the M&A portion of your question, we like M&A. I think Patrick noted a few minutes ago that our investment in RM auctions is doing very well, that’s a recent example that precedes me and I’m delighted with the performance of it and our opportunities there.

And so yes, we are absolutely looking at partnerships in a variety of different ways and we view it as a crucial opportunity either to expand and deepen our presence in parts of business that we think are structurally attractive and would return more than the cost of capital over the long term. Or secondly there, we might add capabilities to enhance what we are already doing in various parts of our business.

I think I’ve gone all of them, but better check.

Yeah. That’s great.

One of the themes that you’ve brought up a few times in your prepared remarks was pricing and pricing excellence. Could you just articulate where you’re going with that and does that mean that you are looking at ways to think about trying to get prices consummate with elevated level of service, just curious on your thoughts there.

Yes, it’s a very interesting question. First of all, the general philosophy we have here is that, we have a really high quality service and we should price for it and that’s not a huge surprise.

But what’s interesting is that when you begin to think about how an organization prices, what you see is there is a heterogeneous pool of clients and a heterogeneous pool of services and products that we offer. So for example, how do we think about pricing, shipping and handling on a consignment that is $50,000 or $75,000 versus $30 million or $40 million, how do we think about pricing various elements of what we do around the world with respect to again a heterogeneous demand curve against for our services.

And my view on that is that pricing really is a science and we need to be very careful about it, and there are areas where if we just do it by heuristics or we just do it by a past practice or we don’t think about it very analytically and we think about it carefully and we think about what is all the value that we are creating and how do we make sure that we are getting paid for it, it’s – some of that can slip through our shareholders fingers and that to me, I am very focused on. At the same time, it’s crucially important to make sure that we provide even more and better value for our clients, and that will be right at the top of our list.

So it’s going to be a balance and I think there is an opportunity for both of us to win, both our clients and our shareholders.

Okay. And just a last question, the category commentary in terms of jewelry, autos and wine, wine is a pretty different business with respect to price points versus jewelry.

I’m just curious about the methodology behind how you guys thought about where you saw the bigger opportunities in these categories that you’ve cited that would be great. Thank you.

Just to repeat what I said about wine, I said we have some early hypothesis but we are really not going to focus on it until 2016. So let me just – I mean that may have been lost to my earlier remarks, let me just be clear on that.

We have some early hypothesis about it, but we’re not really going to focus on it until 2016. We are focused on where there are big leverage points in the near term where we think we can actually make a lot of significant improvements and that would be jewelry, the middle market would be private sales, it would be contemporary to view all of those areas that I talked about, and those are sort of in my view the headline areas of near term strategic focus.

Wine, we do – it’s a small business for us. It’s an interesting business in a lot of ways.

I think it has a lot of touch points in various areas but it’s not – it’s a sort of thing that I think is a early 2016 type strategy focus. Hope that was clear.

Yeah, that’s clear and we get it with the traffic opportunity potentially. Okay.

Thank you. Best regards.

Thank you.

Good morning. First, you indicated that you plan to have a stronger focus on the contemporary category and I think as we all know it’s very competitive and volatile category.

Just wondering how you expect to take share and then what you plan to do or how you will manage the volatility if there is a slow down. And then to add on that, you mentioned hiring more talent in that area.

What specifically do you need, is it more specialists for the contemporary category, what is needed to really drive that business.

It would be a bit vague here and let me just say it’s pretty clear that there are a number of elements of our contemporary business that are very, very strong and making great progress. And I think our contemporary group has identified some areas where we can be doing a lot better and some of it is resources, some of it is geographic dispersion, some of it is some skilled things that they want us to fill out and we’re going to be very focused on it.

Some of it is the way we are structuring our relationships with consigners and all of those things are on the table for a variety of different possibilities. In terms of the volatility, I think I’ll just reiterate what I said in the last call which is we are going to be very competitive in the business.

At the same time we are focused on the return on invested capital and being careful with shareholders money. So we will definitely look to find ways to hedge.

I will add though that we’ve had a fair bit of focus on the contemporary market in the past several months. And looking at it very carefully both internally and externally, I am excited about the prospects there.

Okay. That’s helpful.

And then just a question on the middle markets, who is driving that business? Are you attracting new buyers, are you seeing some bidders at the higher end during the down to lower price point art works.

Just kind of curious on what’s going on with the middle markets, I know it’s a big share of your business. Thank you.

I don’t think we’ve commented on how the middle market has changed first half this year versus first half last year, and I think I already said more than I think we’ve said about the middle market thus far. So meaning in terms of the effect on our financials, I’m not going to go much beyond that.

In fact I’m not going to go beyond that at all. What I will say though is that the middle market for us has a lot of interesting qualities to it.

One is it can bring in people that are able to afford stuff well above the middle market but need an entry point. Another is it’s a very interesting area to think about how we use the internet and how we use alternative and potentially digital alternatives to create opportunities for us to drive revenue where it couldn’t be.

There are many, many kinds of prospective consignments that we currently turn away because they are not a really good fit for our high touch model that might be really interesting if we had a sort of lower cost approach to them or a lower point on the cost curve and able to serve them. And we also think it’s a very interesting way to take clients that are excited about types of categories and one price point and migrate them to higher or different price points.

And so we think it’s got a lot of opportunity, it just needs a lot of focus.

Okay. Great.

Thank you.

I just want to thank you all and thank Patrick and the team, and wish you all a very, very good day and good weekend in August. Thanks.