£8m home RBS chief gave to his ex-wife

 

First his annual bonus is cut to just under £1million. Now it seems that Stephen Hester’s still far from insignificant fortune has taken another hit. The beleaguered Royal Bank of Scotland boss separated from his Canadian-born wife Barbara in 2010. Mr Hester’s name has now disappeared from Land Registry documents listing ownership of their magnificent £8.6million marital home. The couple, married almost 20 years with two children, purchased the five-bedroom, four-bathroom mansion in one of the capital’s most exclusive areas in 1995 for £1.78million. Publicly available documents last year listed the pair as joint owners of the mortgage-free West London home, with neighbours including Simon Cowell and Sir Richard Branson. But now the property is registered with Barbara Abt, the maiden name of the banker’s estranged wife, as sole owner. The RBS boss – linked to attractive divorcee Suzy Neubert four months after his marriage break-up – is apparently renting a £3.8million apartment near his family. But while Mr Hester may have ‘lost’ the London home, he can fall back on his vast country pile in Oxfordshire, a 350-acre estate complete with eight gardeners. And there is always the ski chalet in Verbier. The Oxford-educated banker met his estranged wife Barbara when both were working at Credit Suisse. They married in 1991. The couple divided their time between London and Oxfordshire and shared a love of fox-hunting – she is a master of foxhounds for the Warwickshire Hunt. Shortly after taking over the helm at state-owned RBS in 2008, Mr Hester faced immediate criticism over his indulgent lifestyle after hosting a lavish hunt ball at his £7million country estate. And the notoriously thin-skinned Mr Hester remains annoyed whenever any newspaper prints the much-published photograph of him astride a horse dressed in full hunting regalia. Despite their shared country interests, the Hesters parted in the summer of 2010. One family source said at the time: ‘It’s terribly sad. They’re working on an amicable separation for the sake of their children and Stephen is getting on with his job.’  Later that year, the RBS boss, 51, appeared arm-in-arm with mother-of-two Miss Neubert, like his wife a former banker. She works in the City, as head of sales and marketing for private bank J O Hambro, which handles the funds of hugely wealthy individuals.