Former UBS multi-millionaire banker divorce goes to top UK court
The high-profile divorce battle of a former UBS executive and his wife heads to the highest court in the UK as the couple fight over assets linked to a tax planning scheme.
Clive Standish was once the chief financial officer of Swiss bank UBS. He retired in 2007 and has since been involved in legal action with his wife over the £132m family fortune.
Mr Standish met Anna through her first husband; he is also their daughter’s godfather.
Clive and Anna married in December 2005, had two children, and lived in Australia and Switzerland before relocating to London.
The couple separated in 2020 and have since been fighting over money and assets, which is now set to be heard at the Supreme Court today (Wednesday).
Eight years ago, Mr Standish was concerned about inheritance tax as he was due to be domiciled in Britain for the tax year April 2017. The first judgment from the Family Court stated that his estate would be liable for around £32m in UK inheritance tax.
As Mrs Standish was non-domiciled due to her domicile of origin being Australia, he was advised to transfer assets to his wife. He went on to transfer approximately £77m worth of assets to her in March and early April 2017, which went up in value over £80m.
The wife was expected to transfer the assets into a trust, but she never did this and, according to her husband’s lawyers at Stewarts, she went on to commence divorce proceedings.
The £80m has been the main contentious issue in the couple’s legal battle. Mr Standish maintains that the majority of those assets were non-matrimonial property. However, Mr Justice Moor held in 2022 that those assets were matrimonial property and divided them 60/40 in the husband’s favour.
As a result, the wife was awarded assets worth £45m and ordered to transfer to the husband the other assets she owned.
However, at the Court of Appeal last year, the judges held that the assets transferred to the wife in 2017 were not transformed into matrimonial property. Additionally, the court reduced the wife’s total award by 40 per cent to £25m.
Mrs Standish now, via the celebrity divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton, appeals to the Supreme Court to have the Court of Appeal decision overturned. The case will be in front of the Lord Justices over Wednesday and Thursday.
As Amy Radnor, partner at Farrer & Co, explained, the “Standish is a case about the super wealthy, but unusually it’s also a case where the principle involved is relevant to everyone.”
“The implications of this case are extremely wide-reaching,” she added.