A specialist firm operating in the area of art finance has recruited to its team as the sector continues to evolve.

Falcon Fine Art, part of Falcon Group, the specialist finance firm, has appointed Sharon Grob, formerly of firms such as Citi, Coutts and Merrill Lynch, to join its team.

Grob will work with clients to expand the use of art financing. Most recently, she was UK head of partnerships at Borro, the specialist lender. 

Falcon Fine Art enables collectors to raise finance against their fine art assets, thereby generating liquidity and releasing equity without having to sell the artwork. 

The business focuses primarily on Old Master, Impressionist, and Post War and Contemporary art.

Parent organisation Falcon Group has provided more than $7 billion in funding for its clients in the past four years and operates in the Middle East, Asia, North and Latin America, and Europe. The organisation is not connected to Falcon Private Bank.

The world of art finance continues to evolve. Last year, New York-headquartered Athena Art Finance launched with equity capital led by The Carlyle Group and the private equity unit of Pictet, the Geneva-headquartered private bank. Athena’s chief executive is Andrea Danese, a structured finance veteran who, along with his colleagues, wants to use some of the tools of modern finance to shake up the art world. Art is a relatively illiquid asset class – artworks have their unique qualities – and typically requires considerable research and diligence. This market has at times seen heavy inflows from investors seeking “real assets” in this age of central bank money printing, but the fortunes of art investment have been mixed – there have been a number of sharp setbacks. (For more on that story, see here.)