Private Air New York

www.privateairny.com Private Air | Fall 2020 32 THE COLLECTION CLASSY ASSETS The Fleming family has shown the world of finance how to collect, with their unrivalled Scottish artworks being admired by connoisseurs and the envy of their peers and rivals, as huon mallalieu discovers W hen a selection of paintings from the Fleming Bank collection was shown at the National Galleries of Scotland in 1995, the exhibition was titled Hidden Assets. e Fleming collection is an ever-more valuable asset, but since 2000 it has hardly been hidden. e partnership that became Robert Fleming Holdings, one of the United Kingdom's most successful merchant banks, was set up in 1909. It grew from the business acumen and investment skills of Robert Fleming from Dundee, who left school at 13 to become a clerk in a jute factory, made his first serious money selling sacks for sand-bags to both sides in the American Civil War, and established an investment trust in London in 1873 to profit from the American railway boom. He then set up on his own in 1900 and continued in the business until shortly before his death, aged 89, in 1933. Although established in the City of London, the bank's Scottish origins were important to Fleming's descendants – indeed, until the sale to JP Morgan Chase Manhattan in 2000, staff at the headquarters were welcomed to work by a piper on three mornings each week. Naturally enough, the family – which included the writers Peter and Ian Fleming – were not the only Scots on the board, and it was Aberdonian David Donald, who in 1968 first suggested that life in the then new offices in Crosby Square could be made more enjoyable for all if a few pictures were placed on the walls and that they should be by Scottish artists. Donald, a lawyer turned investment manager, had a life-long enthusiasm for art and was given carte blanche to buy pieces. In the early days, there was no mention of a budget and

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