Case No. BV20D11362

36.The Wife’s section 25 statement is dated 13 January 2023. She remains in rented accommodation in Denmark. She says that she embarked on, but did not complete, a degree in construction engineering. She then worked as a marketing assistant, before doing a course in landscape architecture. Thereafter, she was employed by the planning department of a Danish Municipality. She obtained a Master of Science in Landscape Architecture but she gave up work completely on the move to Austria. She says that all the family’s capital was invested in the purchase of the trading company. A mortgage was taken on their property in Denmark, which was subsequently sold. The Husband’s mental health had always been fragile. She says that she had received a little less than £1.1 million since April 2020, of which £400,000 had gone on litigation costs, even though the Husband had received net dividends of £5.3 million in that period. He had been able to purchase a flat, via Y Co, for £1,176,000 and a boat, whilst she remained in a rented property. She did receive £523,000 in August 2022. In late 2021, the Husband was telling her that the company was “on the verge of collapse”. It was an exceptionally worrying time for her. The Husband had never worked with the production equipment, so it cannot have been him that fixed the problem. It was a huge relief when his brother said that they had finally managed to release a non-infected production batch. Even then, however, she had been told that it had taken a “marked toll” on the company. Neither party had brought anything substantial into the marriage. The Husband had moved from one field to another closely related field. She says that he had travelled more than 100 days per annum for long periods of the marriage. They had agreed to do whatever it required to buy the company, including borrowing around £290,000 on their house, that had previously been mortgage free and cashing in his pension at a significant tax cost. They risked everything. I will have to make a finding as to this. The purchase of the trading company was a joint marital endeavour. They discussed the trading company quite extensively during the marriage. After the separation, the Husband merely continued the role he had undertaken during the marriage. Indeed, he had handed over leadership to Mr S in July 2020. He had only been working three days per week from June 2019 and then only one day per week from July 2020. He is a skilled businessman but he is not responsible for the scientific innovations and methods deployed in the trading company. The product has not changed. the product is a critical component of specialised therapies and vaccines. She did say, in May 2021, that she would accept 45% due to her belief that he would have to continue to work in the trading company after the conclusion of the litigation, but that justification has fallen away. This marriage was, she says, a true partnership of equals. The Husband would not have been able to participate in the buy-out if she had not agreed to re-mortgage the family home. 37.The Husband’s section 25 statement is also dated 13 January 2023. He contends that the dominant factor in the division of the assets is his unequal contribution in creating the enormous wealth flowing from the sale of the trading company. He adds that his shares cost £310,000 in December 2017, shortly before the breakdown of the marriage. He contends it was his visionary leadership that led to the huge sale proceeds. Moreover, he says, all but one year of this work was conducted after the breakdown of the marriage. He says that there is nothing remotely conventional about turning £310,000 into over £250 million. It was achieved as a result of his specific strategic business acumen. He claims the family home in Denmark, which was acquired for over £300,000 and sold for over £900,000 was originally funded from his pre-marital assets but I am clear nothing turns on that. They received €173,000 from the sale of the Mediterranean Villa. He then says that the parties separated in January 2019, but it took until June 2019 for him to find an alternative flat. He had originally worked in research and filed a number of patents but he had been asked to move to XB Co in January 2007. He explained how the product worked. The process is, however, extraordinarily complicated and sensitive. the product is manufactured from another substance. The CEO of X Co did not want to continue with the business due to the investment required to develop new drugs; the risk of failure; and the cost of updating the factory. The Husband had been tasked with finding a purchaser but had failed. He had therefore said that he would buy the company in November 2017. He made the offer with the intention of abandoning drug development and only manufacturing the product. He negotiated the retention of the Q Co royalty payments when they were due to expire. He made the drug development staff redundant. The purchase was eventually completed in December 2017. He paid £310,000 for his nearly 70%. X Co retained 8%. Even after the purchase, he says he still had some savings; the remaining equity in the Danish property and the Mediterranean villa; and some stock options in X Co. He calculates that these totalled £500,000. If the business had failed, he would just have had to find another job. In the worst case scenario, Q Co would have bought the business, although it is not clear to me why they didn’t in 2017. He then describes the two initiatives he made in 2018, namely the new contract with Q Co and the stock he had bought from the foreign firm that had ceased operations. He deals with the involvement of M Fund as set out earlier in this judgment. In 2019, there were further amendments to the Q Co contract, which guaranteed revenue for ten years. He had been able to play Q Co off with threats to go to a rival. He then deposes to the move of the trading company into specialised therapy in 2020. He claims the entire credit for this development. He says that, at his direction, the company began to construct new laboratory facilities to research the use of the product in specialised therapy. These facilities were completed in April 2021 at a build cost of £5 million. The idea was to sell the research to companies conducting such therapies. There had been problems during Covid of obtaining raw materials. He had resigned as CEO in 2020 but he continued to make strategic and key decisions. By 2021, the trading company was being told, by the investment banks, that the total value was between £210 million and £393 million but that was before the batch infections. He brought in external experts to fix the batch infections, after the internal investigations had failed. The experts arrived and the problem was solved by February 2022. He says that Mr S offered to resign due to his failure to resolve the issue, but the Husband refused to accept his resignation. The sale process was able to resume in April 2022 after the successful production of batches of the product. He states that it was the new strategy of working in the field of specialised therapy that was very important to the purchaser. His contract ended on 31 December 2022, so he could move back to Denmark.