NEW YORK— In a June 22 letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, William S. Sheridan, Sotheby’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, refused to disclose the specific criteria the company uses to set its executive pay and how its bonus pool is derived from its earnings. The SEC made the letter and other correspondence from Sotheby's public yesterday.

Sheridan citied the auction house’s competition with rival Christie’s as the reason behind its withholdings. While Sotheby's is a public company, Christie's has been a privately owned since 1998, when French billionaire Francois Pinault acquired the auction house. Sheridan explained that disclosure of this information “could result in competitive harm to the company” largely because, he wrote, “Our principal competitor is a private company and is not subject to the disclosure.”

The letter from Sotheby’s was sent in response to a recommendation from the SEC in May to improve its explanation of executive pay, which was also asked of other commercial giants such as Microsoft Corp. and Coca-Cola Co. Kathleen Collins, the SEC’s accounting-branch chief replied to the letter, saying that that the regulator completed its review and had no further comments. In an interview, Sheridan called the SEC's response “routine.”

Read more at Bloomberg.