Case No. BV20D11362

2.The Husband was born in Denmark in November 1965, so he is now aged 57. Until recently, he was a board member and the driving force behind a company based in England, known as A Co (“the trading company”). The trading company is, according to its website, a world leading manufacturer of a medical product (“the product”) and, as such, its manufacturing plant is the core of its business. The company was sold last year for over £400 million. Following its sale, the Husband returned to live in Denmark. 3.The Wife was also born in Denmark in June 1973, so she is aged 49. She also now lives in Denmark with the three children of the family, having secured permission to relocate there permanently in July 2021. She is a home-maker and child-carer. Prior to the birth of the children, she had worked as a landscape architect.4.The Husband obtained a degree in biochemistry engineering. Later, he added an MBA. In 1990, he joined a large multinational pharmaceutical company based in Denmark as a researcher. In 1995, he moved to Malaysia as the head of a technical department of that company and then as head of the household care division for South East Asia. 5.The parties met in Denmark in the Spring of 1998. The Wife says they began to cohabit in her rented flat in April 1999. The Husband says that they did not do so until 2001, in his flat. It really does not matter which is correct as it is accepted that neither had any material financial resources at the time they did so. In 1999, the Husband was appointed global divisional marketing manager. He purchased his own apartment in Denmark in July 2000. In November 2000, the husband’s employer divided into two. The Husband transferred to the biotech company, X Co as a senior account director. He became a senior marketing director in 2003.6.A family home was purchased in Denmark in April 2004 and the parties married there on 28 July 2004. They have three children. The oldest is D, who is now aged 18. [Further details redacted.] There are then twins, E and F, who are aged 16. [Further details redacted.]7.The family moved to Austria in 2005 when the Husband was appointed as a senior sales director of X Co based in Austria. Around this time, X Co was purchasing pharmaceutical businesses, which led to the formation of XB Co in December 2006. The Husband was appointed as vice president of XB Co in January 2007. The family moved to England. The Wife and children returned to Denmark in July 2009. The Husband followed in December 2009.8.In January 2016, XB Co (the business producing the product) was renamed A Co and the Husband was appointed Chief Executive Officer. It appears, however, that X Co had little confidence in the trading company. There is no doubt that it had a loss making research and development business. Its factory and equipment was old and inefficient. The Husband was tasked with trying to sell the business but he had no success. He therefore proposed a Management Buyout (“MBO”) led by himself, but supported by the other main executives of the trading company. This was completed on 27 December 2017. As he received very nearly 70% of the shares in the trading company, he had virtually complete control over the direction and future of the business. At first sight, this looked like a poor deal for X Co, but he explained to me in oral evidence that X Co took a significant amount of cash out of the business, amounting to around £16 million and were entitled to future royalties on use of the product which he put at £70 million. The purchase price itself was, on any view, modest, albeit that X Co retained around 8% of the shareholding. The Husband says that he was initially wrong in saying that he paid £500,000 for his 69.76% shareholding, which he acquired through companies known as Y Co and G Co. He says that he now realises he paid DKK 2.8 million, or more like £310,000, out of total consideration of DKK 4 million. The other executives had the remaining shares. There has been a dispute as to how the sum of £310,000 was funded, although a mortgage was definitely taken on the family home in Denmark. The following year, the Husband also cashed in his Danica Pension, which was worth DKK 8.1 million, but he had to pay DKK 4.8 million in tax, such that he only received DKK 3.3 million. The Wife’s case is that the parties put their economic futures on the line to pursue this MBO.9.The Husband moved to England to manage the trading company in January 2018. He proceeded to make around 30% of the staff of 125 redundant, by closing the loss making research and development arm of the business. He also put in train a substantial rebuild of the factory, consolidating it onto one site from the previous two and commissioning an entirely new set of manufacturing equipment. The Wife and children followed him to England in July 2018 but the family’s base was a rented property in Central London, so that the children could attend an International School, as there was no suitable school in the area where they had previously lived. 10.In August 2018, the trading company signed an amended supply agreement with its biggest customer, Q Co. It appears that it was on favourable terms, negotiated by the Husband. The business also managed to purchase significant stocks of a different type of the product at cost from another company, when the latter company ceased production. This was a source of considerable profit to the trading company, put by the Husband at around £5 million. 11.In December 2018, M Fund, an investment fund, offered to acquire an option to purchase 51% of the trading company on terms that would have valued the entire company at £41 million. As that was only one year after the MBO, it shows a remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of the business, given that the purchase price only a year earlier for the entire company had been around £500,000. X Co rejected this offer in February 2019 and made it clear that they would invoke an anti-embarrassment clause if the business was sold before 2020. The clause would entitle X Co to 50% of the sale price, even though it only had an 8% shareholding. M Fund increased its offer to £45 million in April 2019, but again X Co was not interested and M Fund walked away from any deal.