By Tommy Stubbington
LONDON--The estranged wife of hedge-fund tycoon Christopher Hohn
will receive $530 million in what is believed to be the U.K.'s
biggest-ever divorce payout, a U.K. court has ruled.
A judge in London's High Court has awarded Jamie Cooper-Hohn
$493 million in cash and the rest in the form of a property in
Connecticut and adjustments to her share of a pension.
A full judgment will be published in December, but the figures
were cited during a court hearing on Thursday.
Ms. Cooper-Hohn, 49, was seeking half of Mr. Hohn's assets,
while her husband says she was entitled to just a quarter on the
grounds that his talents as an investor constituted a special
contribution to their wealth.
During testimony earlier in the year, Mr. Hohn compared himself
to some of the world's best-known investors, including billionaire
George Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management LLC, saying that
"over the long term I'm an unbelievable moneymaker."
In awarding Ms. Cooper-Hohn less than half of the couple's $1.3
billion fortune, the case could set a legal precedent in the U.K.,
which has developed a wide reputation as a capital for divorce
disputes between ultra-rich couples.
"London is a hotbed of economic interest and, for those
domiciled elsewhere, an onshore tax haven. This means the capital
is bursting with a huge proportion of the world's moneyed
individuals who have made their homes here. When they divorce, the
numbers are big," said Ayesha Vardag, president of family law firm
Vardags.
A spokeswoman for The Children's Investment Fund Management, Mr.
Hohn's firm, couldn't be reached for comment. A spokesman for Ms.
Cooper-Hohn declined to comment.
TCI has been one of Europe's top performing hedge funds in
recent years, gaining 47% last year and 29% in 2012, according to a
hedge-fund investor with access to performance figures. TCI manages
around $12 billion in assets and is known for taking an activist
approach to investments in companies such as Japan Tobacco Inc.,
Lloyds Banking Group PLC and European Aeronautic Defence &
Space Co., now called Airbus Group.
The firm has plowed millions of pounds of profit into a
charitable foundation affiliated with TCI that the couple
co-founded.
Mr. Hohn and Ms. Cooper-Hohn met while students at Harvard
University, and have been married for 17 years. They have four
children.
In 2011, Galina Besharova, the wife of the late Russian oligarch
Boris Berezovsky, received a settlement in a London divorce case
that news reports put at around GBP200 million ($314 million).
Laurence Fletcher and Phillipa Leighton-Jones contributed to
this article.
Write to Tommy Stubbington at tommy.stubbington@wsj.com
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