UK: Ex-trader ordered to pay $583 million in divorce payout

LONDON – A British judge has ruled that the ex-wife of a former oil and gas trader should receive 453 million pounds (US$583 million) in one of the biggest divorce settlements in the country.

Judge Charles Anthony Haddon-Cave ruled after a private family court hearing on Thursday that the woman should get a 41.5 per cent share of a fortune that totals just over 1 billion pounds.

The judge said the couple, who married in Moscow in 1993, had made “equal contributions to the welfare of the family.”

Neither the 61-year-old man nor the 44-year-old woman was identified. The judge said the man was a former trader who had built a fortune in the Russian energy business, while the woman had been a housewife and mother to the couple’s now grown-up children.