Tattersalls Book 1.

Well it's nice to know the price of oil has a silver lining. Godolphin very active spending over £6m (about 20% of total sale). Should have no trouble filling Cecil's old yard next year.

Shadwell bought a nice Siyouni filly out of Lah Ti Dah (also by Dubawi), not quite a million but not far off at gns 880k

I saw that Blackbarn. Its good to see them buying again but unfortunately I don't think they will be anywhere near the force they were again.

Agreed, definitely not!

Another one though.......and another filly.

Shadwell, who made their first public purchase in Europe for close to two years on Tuesday, re-entered the fray again on Wednesday when going to 1,050,000gns for the Kingman filly out of Traffic Jam offered by Ballylinch Stud at Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Sale.

The March foal boasted arguably the biggest update in the catalogue as she is a half-sister to Place Du Carrousel, who was listed as having won the Group 3 Prix Cleopatre but added the Group 1 Prix de l'Opera to her record at Longchamp on Sunday as her sibling was being paraded for prospective purchasers at Park Paddocks. .

Big sale today - Another out of a Dubawi mare

Watership Down Stud’s Frankel colt out of So Mi Dar bore more than a passing resemblance to his sire and marched into the Park Paddocks ring with an accordingly sizeable reputation on day two of Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Sale.

The blue-blooded youngster lived up to his star-billing by drawing a bid of 2,800,000gns from Godolphin, a price that makes him the most expensive yearling sold anywhere in the world this year.

The day total (£49 million) was an all time record but has a long way to go to beat one Premier League footballer! Godolphin must have been given £100 million of the oil profits to spend.

Yes but premier league footballers haven proven they can play.

Sage - Oil is tuppence for Dubai these days.

Richard Knight seemed to be spending a lot for an "undisclosed bidder"

oh dear

https://www.racingpost.com/news/latest/derby-winning-owners-205m-of-stock-forced-to-be-resold-due-to-non-payment/595029

I'm surprised you're allowed to bid millions for horses without producing some kind of evidence you'll be able to pay. Knight must feel a prize chump - unless perhaps he doesn't for some reason. Total shambles.

I think Richard Knight will be feeling pretty ropey right now because I guess he might not have been paid for his efforts either.
Reputational damage is in the eye of the beholder I suppose.
But I guess if someone comes asking you to do the job it must be hard to turn it down. Those sums will have been agreed by the ‘purchaser’ with the sales companies prior to the auctions and the agent is just that, an agent, no responsibilities for settling the purchasers misdemeanours.

what about the buyers who paid more than they needed to because Knight was the underbidder?

I think they will have to take it where the sun don't shine A_T.

yes th no doubt.

the lack of due diligence here is staggering - it smelled rotten back in October but I guess everyone was intoxicated with thoughts of the amount of money everyone appeared to be making.

A-T why do you think due diligence was lacking?

someone was allowed to "buy" horses they couldn't pay for

can anyone just roll up to these auctions and bid?

I have to say I tend to agree to some extent with you A_T. £20 million seems excessive. You shouldn't really just allow someone to bid to that extent without some legal guarantee of payment. On the other hand, I have little to no sympathy for anyone involved. If you put your hand up and bid a million quid for a horse you should be happy its worth it and don't blame the under bidders for hiking the price (maybe a good lesson for all bidders in these inflationary times). I think there must be more to this as the guy surely wouldn't have wanted to tarnish his name like this. Even if he was having some financial problems I'm sure the sales companies would have come to some arrangement with him.

Someone was allowed to buy horses they ‘haven't’ paid  for. Will we ever know that they ‘’couldn’t’ pay for them?
I think that due diligence is about reducing a risk in any transaction it can never take away the risk completely and it seems that Keeneland, Goffs, Arqana and Tattersalls all assessed the risk and came to similar conclusions.
It is an auction not a private treaty sale and it is a mad fire breathing creature as far as the usual guarantors of risk are concerned.
The sales companies can stand these losses - do they insure against them? I don’t know, but they accept it as part of the game I think.
What would the folks on here suggest as safeguards to avoid this type of thing happening?

Just had a quick look at Tatts Bk1 and it looks like he was responsible for roughly £10m of purchases. The total sale was about £125m and at 5% Tatts got just over £6m commission. So currently they are down roughly £4m on the sale. On the bright side they own some nice horses and if they can't sell them they could always try and win some bk1 bonuses with them. Maybe they should playback some of their sales patter to boost their confidence in them. 'Ahhh, he looks sure to win a nice race doesn't he!'

They could always copy Betfair and ask potential bidders to deposit a sum in excess of what they intend to bid. I suspect that this chap was trading on past reputation and someone at Tatts failed to check him out. They sound like some nice horses that should resell for nearly as much as the default.

it's reminiscent of when the Qataris didn't pay their training fees - hard to believe they weren't good for them but for some reason they did not pay. There is little transparency in the internal affairs of the middle eastern regimes - guess you always take a chance when taking money from those who lack governance.

In fairness to Tatts its their business and the governance is up to them. They took a risk, paid the vendors and now have to go on a recovery mission. I quite admire the way they go about things. Allowing people a line of credit helps the whole industry especially  vendors and trainers. Yes £10m seems a little careless but I'm sure they will survive. They've got the grand they robbed off me for pulling my foal out of the sale in December so that'll help them a little!!

truehonch you are almost as important to the industry as the leader of Dubai!
You will get a free entry in Feb if you are so inclined.

I’m with you on Tatts. Moan as we do at times they have more integrity than most and over all they deserve their position of dominance and at times like this they put their hands in their pockets - deep.

I wish!!!

Is that something they always do? I don't usually pull out foals and was surprised to get that email from them. I didn't go for it, I just thought I'd hold on and see how he turns out.

I think so yes. I entered off my own bat and was just not charged entry on the statement.

It’s a help because it’s a dicey old sale but if you are nice they will find you and it worked for me, sort of!

Thanks PotM. Hope you have a good spring.