Roman Abramovich has saved himself billions of pounds by settling his divorce with his wife, Irina, in Russia rather than in London, legal experts said yesterday.

London has become the divorce capital of the world after a series of court rulings that have led to wives being awarded an increasingly large slice of their husband’s fortunes.

Irina Abramovich was married to the owner of Chelsea Football Club for fifteen years and cared for their five children, enabling him to build up his £10.8 billion fortune during the marriage. So an award of as much as £4 billion would have been on the cards, rather than the £1.5 billion that he is reported to be paying out. If the couple had chosen to squabble in the English courts over the Abramovich empire, the battle would have been public, slow and costly, lawyers said.

The generous awards to wives given by English courts are being challenged by an insurance magnate, John Charman, who is contesting the decision last summer to award £48 million to his wife, Beverley. The Court of Appeal ruling in his case is expected to set new guidelines on how the courts should divide a couple’s assets.

Lawyers for Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills will watch the outcome for its impact on what slice of Sir Paul’s £800 million fortune should go to Ms Mills.

The Abramovich divorce is in a different league, James Stewart, family partner at Manches, said yesterday. “We are talking here of billions, not millions,” he said.

In England, the starting point would be that the wife should have 50 per cent of the assets, he said. But then the courts would look at the “special contribution” that the husband had made to the fortune amassed. Factors that would be taken into account included the length of the marriage, how much wealth was brought to it and what each spouse contributed, he added.

James Maguire, a family law partner with Cobbetts, in Manchester, said: “Tactics come into play in a case like this, where there is the option of different jurisdictions, and Abramovich is astute enough to have looked at which international forum best suited his case.

“England is now very much seen as favouring wives; and another consideration would have been the openness and transparency of the court proceedings here, which clients don’t necessarily want.”

Marilyn Stowe, a leading matrimonial lawyer with the Yorkshire law firm Grahame Stowe Bateson, said that proceedings in England would have been “extremely protracted, costly and unpleasant”.

She cautioned against assuming that Mrs Abramovich would have won 50 per cent of her husband’s wealth, or close to it. “What courts call his ‘stellar’ contribution to amassing the wealth would have weighted heavily,” she said.

With the advent of the Russian oligarch, Mr Stewart predicted a growing number of big-money divorces with a Russian dimension.

Moscow is now home to 30 billionaires, he said, and about one third of Russia’s 88,000 millionaires. “The Yukos effect – a fear of meeting the same the fate as Mikhail Khodor-kovsky, who owned Yukos and was jailed – has led to a diaspora of wealthy oligarchs, many of whom have properties in London,” he said.

His fortune

£10.8bn Estimated total value of his fortune

£7.5bn Amount he and partners received for stake in Sibneft oil company in 2005

£1bn Holdings in Russian industry, including food and pharmaceuticals

£2bn Dividends from Sibneft and sales of stakes in other companies, such as aluminium holdings

£28m Six-storey house off Sloane Square, London

£189m Value of yachts: Pelorus, Esctasea, Le Grand Bleu, Sussurro

£119m Value of private Boeing 767 jet, Boeing business jet, and helicopter fleet

£12m Fryning Estate in West Sussex

£15m Château de la Croe in France

£1m Value of his and hers Maybach 62 limousines

Sources: Sunday Times Rich List, Forbes, BBC, newspaper reports

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