Wife of billionaire F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone files for divorce

The wife of the Formula One tycoon Bernie Ecclestone confirmed yesterday that she is leaving her husband after 24 years of marriage.

Divorce lawyers said that their settlement could break all records as the former model and mother of the motor racing chief’s two daughters sought her share of the family billions.

Slavica Ecclestone, 50, moved out of their home in Chelsea, West London, three weeks ago, while Mr Ecclestone attended the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Much of the family wealth is believed to be held by Mrs Ecclestone in a trust that also owns just under 10 per cent of Formula One. This has prompted speculation that Mr Ecclestone, 78, who has run the sport since the early 1980s and has managed repeatedly to sell off parts of his stake without ceding operational control, could find himself fighting his wife for his share of his own money.
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Friends of Mrs Ecclestone said she believed that her husband would be keen to avoid a legal battle in which his affairs would be pored over in open court. It is not known if the couple signed a prenuptial agreement. “She’s going to hang on to what she’s got,” a friend said. “The settlement is going to be kept absolutely hush-hush. She’s got so much on him that he will not want to go to court.”

No other parties are thought to be involved in the breakdown but Mrs Ecclestone is known to have had trouble with her husband’s workaholic lifestyle. She had wanted him to ease off in recent years, particularly after his triple heart bypass nine years ago.

Mr Ecclestone, who transformed Formula One into one of the most successful sports brands, is a secretive perfectionist who hates to delegate and rarely takes holidays on his yacht or in his Alpine hotel. Asked this month about retirement, he replied: “Never, never, never. The first day I won’t be going into work is the day they will be lowering me into my grave.” In another interview he admitted that his wife found his huge workload difficult. “I get up because there is always something to do. I am a firefighter,” Mr Ecclestone said. “Slavica says to me, ‘I don’t know why you are doing this — it’s not to get a few quid.’

“But in the end I think she understands. I don’t think I could do anything half-cock. You’ve either got to do it properly or not do it.”

The couple met in 1984 when Slavica, who was born in the Croatian region of the old Yugoslavia, attended a Formula One promotional event where she was modelling for Giorgio Armani. She had no idea who Mr Ecclestone was and is said to have given him a false telephone number.

Mr Ecclestone, ignoring their age difference and the 10in height difference between them (she is 6ft 2in, he is 5ft 4in), successfully pursued her and they married in 1985. Despite their wealth the couple are not among the super-rich’s most extravagant spenders. Nor are they the most visible of billionaires. As one observer put it: “She has always been pretty private and has never sought the limelight and they don’t socialise that much publicly.”

Mr Ecclestone is famously thrifty while his wife claims still to do the family shopping occasionally. However, the scale of the money at their disposal — earned principally from property investments and television and race-hosting rights in Formula One — remains overwhelming.

In 2004 they sold a London house in which they had never lived to the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal for a record £57 million.

The British record for a divorce settlement is believed to be £48 million, paid by the insurance magnate John Charman to his wife Beverley in 2006 after 29 years of marriage.

A settlement between Stephen Marks, the French Connection founder, and his wife, Alisa, is rumoured to have been up to £50 million but the exact figure has been kept a secret. In 2004, Mr Marks sold £40 million of his shares in the company to fund his divorce payout.