Still no word on who will take the wheel at Phillips Asia in Hong Kong after Jonathan Crockett’s departure in late August. The art market is so soft that nobody appears eager to volunteer for the charmingly impossible task of producing miracles on demand. Generally regarded as the bronze medalist in the scene, the auction house has been shedding rainmakers beyond Crockett, such as Miety Heiden in New York. The suspicion, naturally, is that the Russian-owned Mercury group is trimming the sails, cutting costs, and perhaps casting about for a new owner. 

Mercury might take a leaf from Sotheby’s glossy handbook. The house has never been shy of hiring photogenic, glamorous figures, among them CC Wang, who presides over Sotheby’s Maison, described by less charitable observers as a luxury department store with an auctioneer’s stationary. But one of its more astute appointments, made during the company’s publicly traded heyday, was the quietly formidable Jen Hua. Recruited in 2013 by Kevin Ching, then chief executive of Sotheby’s Asia, and Patti Wong, its former chairwoman, Hua has since established herself as a power broker of the old-fashioned sort, keeping Sotheby’s performing in Greater China even as reports suggest Chinese collectors have been keeping their wallets closer to their chests. Now deputy chairwoman of Sotheby’s Asia and chairwoman of China, she is also the house’s discreet political ace, being the granddaughter of the former Chinese leader Hua Guofeng.