Guillaume Cerutti


Guillaume Cerutti is a business executive, formerly a senior civil servant. He is currently Chief Executive Officer of Christie's.

Education and career as a civil servant

Cerutti graduated from Sciences Po and later from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration.
He began his career in civil service as a member of the Inspection Générale des Finances, the internal audit service of the French Ministry of Finance and the Economy. In March 1996, he was appointed Managing Director of the Centre Georges Pompidou, a position he occupied for five years. From 2002 to 2004, he served as Chief of Staff to Jean-Jacques Aillagon, French Minister for Culture and the Media. In this role, Cerutti was directly responsible for preparing the ‘loi Aillagon’ – the law of August 1, 2003 – which made the French legal regime on sponsorship and private foundations one of the most attractive in Europe.
From 2004 to 2007, Cerutti was head of the Directorate for Competition and Consumer Protection at the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance. In this capacity, he also held the position of Vice-President of the International Competition Network, which brings together the leaders of the world's competition authorities.

Career in the private sector

In September 2007, Cerutti joined Sotheby's as CEO of Sotheby's France. In 2011, he was appointed deputy chairman of Sotheby's Europe with responsibilities covering France, Benelux, Monaco, and Italy. He brought the house from fourth-highest sales to first on the French market during his tenure, particularly with the help of several prestigious French art collections sold in Paris, London and New York.
Cerutti left Sotheby's in 2015 to join Christie's as president for EMERI and became CEO as of January 2017. In the year 2017, he led the company in a rise of 26 percent in total global sales. In addition, the house has held two majorly successful sales under Cerutti's leadership, including the sale of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi in November 2017 at Christie's New York with the record-breaking price of $450.3 million and The Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller in May 2018 which achieved the highest auction total ever for a private collection.

Other responsibilities and achievements

Since 2015, Cerutti has served as Chairman of the Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques. In the past, he has also held the position of Chairman on the boards of several non-profit organizations in the cultural field, including the Accentus Chamber Choir, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles and the Institute pour le Financement du Cinéma et des Industries Culturelles.
Cerutti is the author of La politique culturelle, un enjeu du XXIème siècle, 20 propositions. He is also the contributor of several articles on cultural politics, notably in the review Commentaire as well as the newspapers Le Monde, Les Échos, and l'Opinion.