Phillips is a British auction house founded in 1796 by Harry Phillips in Westminster, London, which built early prestige selling collections including items from Napoleon Bonaparte's household. Ownership passed through generations of the Phillips family before the firm shortened its name to Phillips in the 1970s. LVMH acquired the company in 1999; Simon de Pury later took a majority stake before the Mercury Retail Group completed a takeover by 2012, after which the firm reverted fully to the Phillips name. Headquartered in London and New York, Phillips is a global auction platform for twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, design, photographs, editions, watches, and jewelry, with its main New York galleries in Midtown Manhattan.