Ocado boss who now lives with model lover used £68m shares to cover divorce payout
THE boss of online grocer Ocado used £68million worth of shares to cover the cost of his divorce, it has emerged.
Tim Steiner left Belinda, 47, his wife of 14 years and the mother of his four children, in 2016 and moved in with 29-year-old Polish lingerie model Patrycja Pyka.
Details of the divorce were kept secret, but London Stock Exchange filings reveal that Mr Steiner, 48, used more than 25 million shares as collateral for a loan to fund divorce obligations in November 2016.
According to the market price at the time, the shares were worth more than £68million. Mr Steiner is understood to have since repaid the loan.
When he and his wife divorced, he was forced to divide his £116million fortune with her. The assets included a £15million mansion in Highgate, north London, and a ski chalet in France.
Mr Steiner has maintained that he did not leave his wife for the model and cited unreasonable behaviour for his divorce.
The businessman set up Ocado in 2000 after working as a bond trader for Goldman Sachs for eight years. He set up the firm with fellow banker Jason Gissing and long-term friend Jonathan Fairman.
Educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s school in Elstree, Hertfordshire, he graduated from Manchester University with a degree in economics, finance and accountancy.
The revelation about his divorce comes after Mr Steiner was forced to come clean about his presence at the sleazy maleonly Presidents Club charity do which took place in January.
He distanced Ocado from the incident, saying that he attended the fund-raising dinner in a personal capacity. He said he was ‘shocked’ by what he read when the allegations of sexist behaviour first came to light in an undercover investigation by the Financial Times.
‘With the benefit of hindsight I wouldn’t have attended knowing what I do now. And to be clear we at Ocado have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to such behaviours, any forms of harassment and the behaviour described by the FT,’ he said.
Mr Steiner had the idea for Ocado after reading about a grocery delivery company that went bankrupt in the US.
He thought the concept could thrive in Britain because people here live more closely together and so delivery vehicles have to travel shorter distances.
Mr Gissing and Mr Steiner both took a 90 per cent pay cut when they launched the firm with backing from friends, relatives and professional investors. After announcing that the company would float on the stock exchange in 2010 – despite failing to have made a pre-tax profit at that point – Mr Steiner admitted he was facing difficult questions at work and at home.
He usually left the company’s public face to Mr Gissing, an Oxford graduate who was pictured in the same Bullingdon Club photograph as Chancellor George Osborne. The arrangement continued even after Mr Gissing jokingly suggested to an interviewer that he had a betterlooking wife than Mr Steiner.
Mr Steiner once said: ‘I’ve got two preoccupations outside work. Spending as much time as possible with my four children and skiing.’
‘Zero tolerance to harassment’