Sotheby v Christie Art

Sotheby's, the world's No. 2 art auction house, is catching up with rival Christie's by winning a lion's share of the most expensive art to sell. Sotheby's first-half art sales totaled $1.96 billion. They were helped by Pablo Picasso's "Dora Maar au Chat,'' which took $95.2 million at a New York art auction in May. Christie's estimated total was "in excess of' $2.09 billion". Christie's, which is owned by the French billionaire Francois Pinault, racked up auction totals of $3.2 billion in 2005, giving it a 19 percent advantage over publicly traded Sotheby's, whose transactions were about $2.7 billion. For 2005's first six months, Christie's had almost $1.7 billion in auction totals, while Sotheby's sales were about $1.3 billion. Sotheby's and Christie's are by far the world's largest auction houses, with combined sales last year of almost $6 billion, up 20 percent from a year earlier. For the full story - click the title Irish Art