Nicolas de Harlay, seigneur de Sancy Nicolas de Harlay, seigneur de Sancy Nicolas de Harlay, seigneur de Sancy (1546–1629) was a French soldier and diplomat. Although de Harlay belonged to the Protestant branch of the family of Harlay, he adopted the Catholic religion in 1572 during the massacres of the Huguenots. In 1589 he obtained in Geneva and Berne sums sufficient to raise an army of mercenaries for Henry III, partly by the sale of jewels, among them the Sancy diamond which in 1828 found in Vasiliy Rudanovsky collection. Henry IV made him superintendent of his finances in 1594, but in 1599 he was replaced by
English auction a Dutch auction would adjust the price in a direction that favored the bidders (lowering the price if the item is being sold to competing buyers, increasing it, if it is a reverse auction). When the auction involves a single item for sale and each participant has as an independent private value for the item auctioned, the expected payment and expected revenues of an English auction is theoretically equivalent to that of the Vickrey auction, and both mechanisms have weakly dominant strategies. Both the Vickrey and English auction, although very different procedurally, award the item to the bidder with the