Earlier this summer, shortly after the announcement of a billion-dollar investment from ADQ, an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, it seemed like Sotheby’s had successfully mitigated the most intense of its financial pressures. Yes, everyone knew the familiar stories of woe: a six-month payment program for vendors that started five years ago; a three-year incentive plan that had been fulfilled with a promissory note earlier this year; a new fee structure; and the brand-revitalizing HQ move to the old Whitney on Madison, slated for later this year. But that confidence was suddenly punctured following two damaging news stories—a leaked bond report in the FT at the end of August, and the devastating, if overstated, Wall Street Journal piece last week questioning Sotheby’s finances.

The other day, I bumped into an executive at the house’s Contemporary Curated sale who was understandably outraged by the latter piece, and in particular the remarkable claim that Sotheby’s executives had expressed, at a meeting in September, “worries about whether the company would be able to keep paying its employees on time.” (The quote was attributed to a person familiar with the discussion, but the Journal acknowledged that Sotheby’s disputed that any such meeting had taken place.) Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that Sotheby’s would run down its cash position and face the kinds of legal and financial consequences of missing payroll rather than exercise, among other options, its credit revolver.