Ray Palmer, director at Suros, told Business Matters the firm's loan book includes some of the strangest transactions in the market. Among them: a £6m loan against 21,000 bottles of wine stored in a Second World War bunker, a £60,000 Macallan whisky bottle, and even an Academy Award. Other approaches - ultimately rejected - included racehorses, Fabergé eggs and a bizarre offer of 50 tonnes of dirt supposedly containing 2% gold.
For many years, the paintings one of which is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while the other hangs at Kenwood were believed to have been painted by the Dutch master. But in the 1920s, the consensus shifted. The Kenwood painting, which is in much better condition and crucially is signed by the artist, was the original Vermeer, experts agreed.