Sotheby's Australia became a locally owned franchise of the global Sotheby's group in September 2009.
The buyer, Tim Goodman and his associates, sold it on with the group's interest in Bay East to a management group headed by Geoffrey Smith and Gary Singer. Goodman stepped down from involvement in the group in January 2011.
John Keats, Sotheby's Australia's senior executive officer, told AASD that the business handled by Bay East, which was mainly lower value art and books, would be included where appropriate in twice-yearly sales of Asian, European and Australian Art and Design.
Sotheby's will shed two staff as a result of the changes. Long serving Anne Phillips, Bay East's Head of Art and Books who has a long attachment to the company, said she is happy to take a break.
Nick Calloway is also heading for new pasture.
Although Jennifer Gibson departed Sotheby's Australia 's Melbourne offices late last year Sandy Bruce, Ann Roberts and Alison Alford continue as specialists and Harley Young will join them as an art specialist for these sales.
Tabitha Davison of Bay East is staying on as Sotheby's as Administrator to the Jewellery department.
Young was Executive Assistant to the Chairman and Facilities and Operations Manager at Sotheby's Australia .
Alec Dickens laboured in the rare and second hand book department before and into the period this market took a big tumble on the back of the internet and electronic tablets.
Smaller auction houses will be disappointed that Sotheby's looks like not referring any significant business on, although Sydney 's Davidsons Auctions had once benefited from previously unwanted Sotheby's business when Sotheby's was under different ownership.
Both Bay East and Davidson's Auctions, have been leading auctioneers of lower value Australian art.
Robert Davidson, director of Davidson's Auctions, told AASD that the market in which he operated continued to clear high percentages (of up to 80 per cent or more) of what was offered.
Works enthusiastically attracting 10 or so bidders five years ago were those making $3000 whereas now the pictures which created the same interest were $300 works. .
The pictures were by different artists but the bidders were often the same.
Davidson said that he would probably now be holding only two fully designated art sales a year.
He would increase the number of combined art and antiques sales to four to accommodate vendors who needed to sell between these two auctions.
Bay East has also been affected by consumer spending reticence. Its art turnover has fallen from $1.69 million in 2010 to $1.39 million in 2011 ro $1.16 million in 2012
Sotheby's new mixed arts and design sales will be held in Melbourne but prospective vendors in Sydney would be looked after from the Sydney offices.
This will put Sotheby's up against another notch against the lower market operator Leonard Joel.
This Melbourne auction house in the twists and turns that the auction industry has taken in the the new millennium, briefly licensed Bay East to operate under its name in Sydney in 2010.
Bay East took its name from the Bay East offices and truck parking facility of Woollahra Council's garbage department.
Tim Goodman said that after establishing his auction house in Anderson Street in 1993 to cater for the top of the market in the former fire station in Anderson Double Bay he founded Bay East Auctions in Cross Street to sell the other stuff that owners of high priced art also wanted to sell.
It later moved to first Bourke and then Young Street , Waterloo , where its name proved momentarily confusing because of the changed location in the inner west, but its attraction the hunters for serendipity and arbitrage gains heightened.
By 2010 it had joined the once wholly owned Goodman operation in Anderson Street which Goodman had taken on with the attraction of peppercorn rent prior to its redevelopment.
When Bonhams and Goodman was transformed into Sotheby's Australia , Sotheby's Sydney auctions were moved there from the Paddington Town Hall .
Late last year Sotheby's needed to move as notice given of development of the site which was expected to require the building demolition.
The operation, sans saleroom, moved in with Sotheby's Australia in Queen Street so it came to share the doors of the both operations.
Sotheby's doors remain very much open with particularly grand plans for Melbourne .
John Albrecht, managing director and proprietor of Leonard Joel, said the move surely reflected a shrinking art auction market as everyone battened down the hatches.
Albrecht pointed out that Joel was also pursuing the upper market on which Sotheby's concentrated with no vendors' commission on high value lots.
Some of the magnificent trees which stood outside Bay East's auction rooms in Anderson Street , Double Bay were felled this week as the re-development of Bay East's confined rooms and adjacent properties began.
But for many trade punters the memories of the rooms before the move back to Double Bay which signalled the end of the halcyon years when attendance could result in purchases guaranteeing a year's supply Guinness.
The rooms in Waterloo had been the scene of numerous estate dispersals with the company well supplied by trustee companies.
Now divorced from the company Tim Goodman said that the company Bay East was formed to fullfil a particular objective and had done so well in its time but the times appeared to have changed.
It had introduced the “Sunday (Art) Sale ” which Leonard Joel had taken to greater heights in the different environment of Melbourne .
One of its highpoints was the sale of the Joan Bowers collection of Indian art in the Waterloo rooms in 2009.
