sotheby's is on the defense. the art auction house is fending off an attack by activist investor dan loeb and his hedge fund third point capital, last year loeb slammed the company demanding a new ceo.third point has 9.3% stake in sothebys. to free up capital-- sothebys plans $22 million in costs cuts, payout a $300 million special dividend in march to investors and potentially sell the new york headquarters. new beginnings mean a new name for two car companies. recently merged chrysler and fiat will be known as "fiat chrysler automobiles." it's "office" is based in the netherlands, however it operates out of a detroit suburb. the merger is off to a good start. chrysler's earnings report revealed the company quadrupled revenues in the fourth quarter, which will help boost fiat's results. now onto more earnings news.. boeing cruised through the 4th quarter with a 26% profit increase as the jet maker delivered a more orders for commercial aircraft. however the stock dropped 7 dollars as investors remain cautious ab

. >> big changes at so these -- sotheby's.nounced they will pay a $300 million dividend and may also sell real estate to put more cash in the hands of investors. activism case of paying off? >> pretty much. this has been called the year of the activist investor. it was just five months ago they fromved a scathing letter to big boys in the activist world, and they own a combined share of about 15%. had to unlock value, and it appeared to play a big role in what happened today. >> what is the biggest change here? applauding the art house for making structural and philosophical changes that reward the shareholder. specifically, sotheby's is going to pay out a special dividend and initiate a share buyback, taking on more debt, and it will also initiate real estate options. they have pricey real estate options in london and new york and may consider selling their new york headquarters. the ceo says, "we are returning meaningful capital to shareholders, and we are establishing a framework to put the art house in a better position co

sotheby's over 200 years, a great brand. all listeners know this name and interesting because a lot of the activist investors have gotten involved to get them to buy back stock and pay a bigger dividend. a great company. people deal with the art marketplace due to death, debt, discretion and divorce. that happens to people all the time. the markets is vibrant. >> we have to leave it there. gentlemen, thank you. noah and george as well. >>> ty, up to you. >> it's been understatement of the day. a rough winter. not even february yet, folks. it is snowing big time in the rockies today. you expect it to snow in the rockies. the south thaws out from the snow and ice storm. debilitating down there. natural gas up 48% in three months, folks. there you see -- actually 39%. yesterday's big jump it is off those highs today, as you see there. down about 7%. dan leonard, meteorologist with wsi. doesn't do the news at 11:00. talks to wall street. why, dan, welcome. first, why did gas spike as much as it did yesterday and sell off today?

." >> stephen: this just sold on sothebys for $46 million. >> that is correct. >> stephen: the highest price ever paid. >> stephen: we don't know who -- for what, for that painting? >> for an american painting. >> stephen: well, for an american painting of that period meaning we're looking at artists like rockwell, edward hopper and georgia o'keefe. yes, it's representational, correct. >> stephen: so isn't it the best reputation if it costs the most? hasn't the market spokeen? >> no, no! i want to tell you --. >> stephen: do you believe in the free market? >> that i believe the market is a critic but it's not a very good critic. >> stephen: not a good as one as ever saw. >> stephen: >> exactly. >> stephen: the market will determine how good your book is, by the way. don't insult the market, deb. why do you think this sold for so much money? what's going on here? >> it's also a thanksgiving picture. and it shows a grandmother and grandson giving things in the -- giving thanks in the middle of a bustling diner. the detail is exquisite, you can make out the "new york times." phenomenon. >

the bottle of whiskey beat the previous record of 460,000 that was sotheby's sold in new york in 2010at only four bottles of macallan decanters were made by the distillery. cheap at any price. >> also "off the desk," no cash, no credit cards, no problem at a urgent care in texas. you can use bitcoins. they are the first to accept a form of payment. they have yet to see a patient pay the bill during a bitcoin. feels it will see more and more patients using it. it sounds risky. david: you knew it would be in texas where people do things independently. >> other businesses taken advantage of using digital money such as overstock.com which allows users to use bitcoin. david: patrick byrne. >> san francisco king fans can buy gear in the team store and pay for tickets using the virtual currency. virgin galactic will accept the currency to pay for the seat intos space. the current flight costs $250,000 which is 325 bitcoins. talking your kind of money. david: bitcoin may replace the dollar. who knows. this currency unaffected by central banks. number one thing to watch will be earnings from i

the auction house sotheby's saw big demand last year. with sales approaching nearly $60 million.th editor, robert frank and jamie ritchie, ceo of sotheby's wines, america and asia. nice to see you. so this business has gotten really big, especially lately, right? stock market run-up, art is going off the charts and so is wine? >> wine's very strong. we saw our peak in 2009-2010 and '11 and our markets, the volumes and value's a little down right now. >> robert, how would you assess what's taken place? >> 2010 was the peak. what caused that weakness last year compared to 2010? was it demand or supply? >> really our market's driven by supply. but the demand fixes the price to bring the supply into the marketplace. in '09-10 we saw huge rush to sell when other asset classes were lower. >> your problem is finding enough good wine to sell right now. >> also the market's moved to mature wine. everyone wants mature wine to drink, enjoy, to pour now. >> the most sought-after wine is this, right? >> the vineyard is the number one seller, yes. >> let me ask you a question regarding that. l

the move coming a month after sotheby's said it would review its finances. "after the bell" is starting right now. david: qualcomm is reporting earnings right now. let's go to dennis kneale to find out what the details are. dennis. >> hello, david. we have a beat to the upside on earnings but a teensy miss to the downside on revenues. earnings per share $1.26, for qualcomm, big cell phone chipmaker. street was looking for $1.18. revenue misses by 50 million, comes in at $6.62 billion and wall street was looking for 6.billion. tech companies you want to see the top line grow. they need growth. the current quarter they project revenue of $6.2 billion. they're promised revenue growth of 5 to 11% for the coming fiscal year. i have to check to see where the 6.72 projected for the current quarter is in line with the growth and the stock will react one way or the other. david: it is just ticking up a little bit right now. we should remember it has come down quite a bit because of qualcomm's links, liz, to apple. it came right down with apple. not quite as much of a

the papers sold in sotheby's in london, the guy who bought them brought them to philadelphia otherwise they would still be in private hands. i was kind of relief to know i was the only person in the universe that had noticed jane. but i was only the second. and i didn't work on the project for a long time. i wrote this long essay in "the new yorker" this past summer about how my mother kept saying why are you going to write the book about jane franklin? i said that hope is impossible. listen to why no one could write that book and she would be like, so write the book. like, get this done. i had made progress and i abandoned it like 10 times. it was really sad. i'm not really a sad person and raising my own children and thinking about this death spooked the hell out of me. then my father died and my mother was very ill. then i said this i must do and i wrote it as fast as i could but i didn't finish it before my mother died. the book is a monument to my mother. >> about the research, you said over and over how scarce the information was. where did you go? how did you find this person? >

sotheby's said today it would pay a special dividend so there's another example.mpany juniper networks beat earnings just about five days ago, also not long after eliot management went active on it. as the "journal" points out, other companies are strengthening their poison pills, they are changing and some ways making it harder to get through the board nomination process in order to ward off activists. with the juniper example, for example, you can't just whip up a good quarter just to fight back an activist. that is obviously something that happens organically. if you look at the dividends and buy-backs, these are things we may see more of as loud-mouthed hedge fund investors start to demand better returns. >> i thought you actually had a climate developing where in this new age of activism the companies themselves were trying to have a more, you know, better relationship with the activists rather than a confrontational thing. >> i think that is happening as well around the margins. i certainly hear hedge funds talking a little more about they call it constructi

and shares of the auction house sothebys which trade under bid were lower today. the climb came despite news that bid will return more than $450 million to shareholders through a special dividend and buy back program. investors put the paddles down nonetheless. the stock was off slightly to $48.74. >>> moving from stocks to big news in the world of fixed income. pemco the world's largest bond fund manager has to fill some big shoes ahead of the announced departure of their ceo. bill growth appointed four new deputy chief investment officers to help replace him. but growth still doesn't appear to know where his high-profile colleague is headed next. >> all we know is that he does have a new job. he said that if one develops it won't be in the financial industry. so that's an important consideration. so wall street and the city can breathe easier, i guess. where do we think it will wind up in 2015 and beyond? well, certainly somewhere i think at elevated circles of influence. >> olarian is scheduled to leave pemco in mid march. >>> the house bassed that bipartisan $

have a toy then the baffling can you be able to launch his book world i wanted to cook christie's sotheby's projects it is a character with any hundred and fifty years a mom to the coffee doesn't have the means to seep through. i learned it is a new roof it's not that the double his house would be like the ultimate goal the mood for. nice post today ben and jake over tea while waiting for best of days. he stays here alongside forty seven families in the shanty town without fort sill or electricity. or open a crummy and tosses. more of them say they have one reason for that difficult situation the quotation. to restate it was may nineteen forty four when he was thirteen years old. although the freaky of the home. rococo grew up on the july we'll use the eighteenth of may and i love most. mostly sunny day exact time when newsnight was taken in my bedroom was sleeping full of crap and that made you get a little soldier and a meadow or chassis complete a mother to your children. you have fifteen minutes to get things like these is done and so instead we got thunder. at the end of the second lo

though and at a folk art collection belonging to a former jeweler bought in a record $13 million sotheby'srought in a lot of money for the folk art community. story. a crazy there is a lot of colorful elements to this. one investor is in jail. we should start with that. >> yes. actually serving a six- year sentence in federal prison, but he was a trustee of the american folk art museum, and he worked on this collection over years, and it was a promised gift to the museum. there is the gift to the american folk art museum. preparing for the coverage of this option, i wanted to see, and it was part of this book, and they were all gifts, part of the museum collection, and they were all sold to pay creditors. there was the bankruptcy. a sickly $140 million in claims, and so the claims, trust, the liquidating trust got $10.5 million on saturday from that sale, and that would redistribute it to the creditors. >> i do not want to keep harping on his background, but he is in for, convicted of fraud this scheme to conceal assets from a bankruptcy court and wire fraud. but he also used to own a jewe

. >> : >> : sotheby's eight that 12 men we got five super bowl rings. >> : video from our helicopterp with abc. piquancy players boarding on the buses that have made their way to san jose airport to what where they are in the air on their way to seattle. >> : as a come back out here live on wont tell you the fans and i spoke with cannot hear. what of them always come out a matter what the stakes. they say they will be back here to welcome the team home. win or lose. the we know that's not happened. >> : are you ready for sunday. pam >> : >> : stay with us for the best in technology. will feature top 20 high-tech gadget. vicki will host the show friday january 24th at 9. this book started as a web site for college kids now a new study shows it's becoming popular with another generation. >> : this book might be more for grandpa these days jr. is turning away. >> : now this book seems to be falling out of favor with younger age groups. number of the third team year-old to younger middle age are now going on to this book as much. >> : the generation that has been going on this book a lot

would top the previous record of $1.35 million per carat for another blue diamond which sold at sotheby'shat mine is doing pretty good. >> that is pretty nice. that is some rock right there. almost a little bigger than the one on your finger. that's okay. >>> "shark tank" tuesday on cnbc featured on one of tonight's -- on tonight's episode starting at 8:00 eastern is the original runner company, creators of the world's first nonslip fabric aisle runners for special events, weddings. the founder was offered a deal by one of the sharks. you have to wait until tonight to see what she did with it. these are hand-painted, each one of them. julie goldman is founder and ceo of the original runner company. welcome. i'm very proud to say i knew what a runner was because my mother was in the floral design business and did a lot of work with runners. how did you come up with the idea for this kind of runner? when i remember them, they were paper or plastic. >> absolutely. >> like going to the grocery store. >> that's exactly what i said on "shark tank." that was really the start of it, i needed a ru

we want to revisit sotheby's. the stock opened higher on news the auction house will return $450 million to investors but the moves are getting lukewarm reception from investors, including one of the activist hedge fund managers who has been pressing for changes. richard mcguire's mercato capital management which was a 6.6% stake, said the steps didn't go far enough. dan lobe is the other activist calling for change. no comment from him so far. he is the company's biggest shareholder with a 9.3% stake. tyler, over to you. >> thank you very much. >>> we move now to the emerging threats around the world. tur symbol is the biggest bear that follows the turkish market, down 8.5% as the graphic shows. michelle caruso-cabrera is in istanbul on the ground there reporting on three themes this hour. first, turkey's central bank and the impact it could have on global fears. second, what turkish business people are saying. and who is turkey's president blaming for all this uproar? michelle, over to you. >> reporter: thank yo

. >> this is at a sotheby's auction in hong kong. that crushed the previous record of $460,000.ottle of whiskey in 2010. this is a rare mccowan "m." it was an exclusive 6-liter decantor. there is an encouraging sign, the proceeds will go to hong kong charities, but someone had the cash to spend $628,000. how many shots are in a 6-liter? >> does it make you fly after you drink it? like, what happens? i like whiskey, but -- >> it makes you rich. it makes you so rich that you can drink $628,000 worth of richness. >> that's a lot of richness. all right, that's it for us this >>> breaking overnight. whiteout conditions are upon us and a massive snowstorm is moving east. more than 1,800 flights canceled already. and this time, it won't be gone as fast as it comes. >>> terror hunt. russian police in an all out search for a black widow who may already been inside sochiment and she may not be working alone. >>> "new day" exclusive. the family of kenneth bae reacting to his dramatic press conference. what they see in that video. >>> your "new day" starts right now. >> good morning. welcom

names snowden rather it's something that said barack obama as nobody wanted to mention edison's the sotheby's revelations he is not to like mad within the obama administration and eat his pizza man within the intelligence services brought the bomb and the speeches said that even wanted to wallow in its decisions actions and motivations but it is clear that the speech and bees because of a life as a bailout would never have happened had it not being faithful these revelations of the quilts know them and this is the matter. he still scares the obama administration because only yesterday the day before the speech that well but the revelations. as revealed by channel four on the garden who have been in talks with adverts know that he is still around he still has information that is willing to shed with media around the world and that could be fo the revelations from edwin said in the future he said he would be happy with what was announced by the by the presence of that. so the other many thanks to pick up on some points you mentioned there in the world this week that's coming up in just a few sh

the fixed bottle of mccallum in a crystal went for $628,000 at sotheby's auction in hong kong, over 100,000ified buyer, net sales proceeds will be donated to local charities and that is something we can raise a glass to. $628,000 for a bottle. tracy: they were actually expecting that. what did that take like? >> really good many. $628,000. tracy: i hope so. coming up on "countdown to the closing bell" activist investor dan lowe take an interest in dow chemical, strategic review, look at the investment record of what his involvement will mean to the chemical giant. we will be right back on this snowy day in the northeast. don't go away. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [ tires screech ] chewley's nds itself in a sticky situation today after recalling its new gum. [ male announcer ] stick it to the market before you get stuck. get the most extensive charting wherever you are with the mobile trader app from td ameritrade. wherever you are with the mobile trader app but with ls ergy, moodiness, i had to do something. i saw mdoctor. a blood test showed it was low testosterone, not age. we talked about axiron the onlynde

lobe as an activist in sort of two ways, sometimes very nasty, think sotheby's with the likes of thethis certainly would seem to be the case here. it is along the lines of the kinds of activist campaigns we've talked about a bit lately where even a large shareholder suches amr. loeb is small in comparison to the market cap at company. it's still not large enough necessarily to sway a lot. the question is whether you can sway the top ten shareholders to your side and perhaps get management thinking this is something they need to consider. >> david? >> yes. >> you were probably doing a lot of reporting. did you see the end where andrew asked him and said we hear all these rumors you want to get rid of the name chemical from dow chemical? is there any tell in that at all. >> i'm not aware that there is. typically mr. loeb will have conversations with management although in this case i'm not sure that's extended to mr. liveris. i would say they're both there in davos. loeb is there, we know liveris is there. this is interesting, it's following that newer trend of activists taking large p

sotheby's has given up some of its gains and they'll pay a special dividend and buy back shares.fter dan loeb called for a management shakup. third point has a 9.3% stake in the company. the company would consider the sale of its new york city headquarters. carl, back to you. >> thanks so much. >>> when we come back snow and ice wreaking havoc on roads all across the south from the carolinas down to atlanta where the major highways are nearly abandoned. we'll get an update on the conditions in the south from the weather channel's jim cantore when "squawk on the street" continues. the most free research reports, customizable charts, powerful screening tools, and guaranteed one-second trades. and at the center of it all is a surprisingly low price -- just $7.95. in fact, fidelity gives you lower trade commissions than schwab, td ameritrade, and e-trade. i'm monica santiago of fidelity investments, and low fees and commissions are another reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971

sotheby's declaring a special dividend of $4.34 per share. dan loeb is a major shareholder.eported slower wireless subscriber growth than analysts were anticipating. and also take a look at shares of marathon petroleum, on the rise. the company reported fourth quarter earnings of $2.10 per share, that's well above estimates of $1.15 per share. revenue also above estimates although marathon's numbers were below year-ago levels. and finally, is cirrus logic earned 12 cents above estimates. the chipmaker issued a weaker than expected current forecast assist the sales mix apparently now includes lower priced products than recently. >>> have i been overdoing it today? it's entitled "bias." and it says joe, i'm an avid follower of your show. i am very disappointed that you continually attack the republican party. the republican party has brought many good ideas to the table. if you recall during the last election, much of what paul ryan said has come to fruition. your and andrew's misguided support is exactly why our country is no longer number one. >> limousine liberal. a communi