John Lewis sells stake in Ocado

11 February 2011 Last updated at 09:49 GMT Continue reading the main story Shares in home delivery grocer Ocado have fallen more than 15% after the John Lewis pension trust sold its 10.4% stake in the firm for £152m.

The online company said the sale would not affect its commercial relations with Waitrose, a John Lewis division.

Ocado mainly sells Waitrose products, but some analysts expect the two to become competitors as John Lewis expands its own grocery business.

Ocado shares have risen strongly recently, closing at 285p on Thursday.

The company had a market value of about £1.4bn. However, in morning trading Ocado's shares were down 44p at 241p.

In a statement, John Lewis said it had arranged for investment bank Goldman Sachs to sell its entire holding of 57.3 million shares to a range of institutional investors. The price paid was 265p a share, raising about £151.8m.

The John Lewis pension fund sold more than half its original stake in Ocado at the time of the online grocer's initial public offering in July.

There had been a "lock-in" agreement preventing further share sales, which expired last month.

The pension trust's representative on Ocado's board, Patrick Lewis, has resigned.

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Francis Bacon work sells for £23m

11 February 2011 Last updated at 02:23 GMT Bacon and Freud were at the vanguard of post-war British painting A painting by Francis Bacon of his friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud has sold at auction for £23m ($37m) - three times the pre-sale estimate.

The triptych, Three Studies For A Portrait Of Lucian Freud, went to an anonymous buyer at Sotheby's in London.

Cheyenne Westphal, from Sotheby's, said it was "an artwork that radiates 'wall-power'".

The sale also saw a Salvador Dali painting reach £13.5m - a new record for any Surrealist work at auction.

The price for Portrait de Paul Eluard smashes the previous record for Dali of £4.1m, which was set in London just 24 hours earlier.

Bidding war

Bacon and Freud met in 1945 and became close companions, painting each other on a number of occasions.

Three Studies For A Portrait Of Lucian Freud has been kept in private since shortly after its completion in 1965.

It was expected to sell for between £7m and £9m, but when it came up for auction on Thursday the price was driven up by more than 10 competing bidders from four continents.

It eventually went for a £23,001,250, including the buyer's premium.

Ms Westphal, chairman of Contemporary Art Europe at Sotheby's, said: "This striking painting has everything a collector in the current market is looking for.

"It is an artwork that radiates 'wall-power' with its brilliant colour and dramatic brushstrokes.

"It narrates one of the most impressive artistic relationships of the 20th Century between two titans of British art and is desirably fresh to the market having remained in the same collection for almost half a century."

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Picasso painting sells for £25m

9 February 2011 Last updated at 00:43 GMT Picasso kept his relationship with Marie-Therese Walter secret for many years

A portrait of the muse who transformed painter Pablo Picasso's life has sold for £25.2m ($40.7m) at Sotheby's auction house in London.

La Lecture went to an anonymous phone buyer after six minutes of bidding.

The masterpiece depicts Picasso's secret lover, Marie-Therese Walter, who was 17 when Picasso, then 45, met her in Paris for the first time.

Their relationship was kept secret for many years because of her age and because Picasso was married.

Ms Walter later said she had never heard of the artist when he first approached her saying: "I am Picasso - you and I are going to do great things together."

Until La Lecture was painted, Ms Walter had only appeared in Picasso's works in code with her features often embedded in the background of his paintings.

It was when the picture was exhibited at a Picasso retrospective that the artist's wife, Olga Khokhlova, realised there was another woman in his life and their marriage subsequently broke up.

Ms Walter later had a daughter, Maya, with Picasso.

Ms Walter inspired a number of works including La Reve as well as Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, both painted in 1932.

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