Alexander Rotter and Cheyenne Westphal, the new worldwide heads of Sotheby’s contemporary department, oversee an auction empire with 90 locations worldwide, including ‘new’ markets such as Brazil, Argentina and Qatar. Rotter and Westphal have also been successfully developing their curated and thematic sales. September’s New York ‘Contemporary Curated’ sale netted $28.3m, exceeding estimates. In keeping with the theme of recognising provenance as key, Westphal is also the driving force behind Sotheby’s support of the annual Tate Britain Commission. It’s not all been plain sailing at Sotheby’s, but things might have settled now that activist shareholder Daniel Loeb’s long-running (and expensive) proxy fight with the board has come to an end. After all, he only wanted the company to become more profitable.