Becker bankrupt after court skills fail him
Former Wimbledon winner unable to convince judge he can pay off debt after series of financial disasters
TO A generation of tennis fans he will always be “Boom Boom” Becker, the explosive young German who won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon three times – the first in 1985 aged 17.
But after a sparkling tennis career, followed by work as a TV pundit, he has now added a rather less than glorious chapter to his CV, that of bankruptcy.
Becker, now 49, was declared bankrupt yesterday over undisclosed sums of money owed to London-based private bankers Arbuthnot Latham & Co since Oct 2015.
It means the star’s remaining assets and property will be disposed of to pay his creditors. There is also the possibility they will seek any earnings he makes as a commentator at next month’s Wimbledon Championships.
The Bankruptcy and Companies Court heard that Becker, who has a home in Wimbledon, had offered to remortgage his €6million (£5.2million) property in Majorca to pay off the debt.
John Briggs, Becker’s advocate, told the bankruptcy judge, Christine Derrett, that it was expected the deal would be approved by a Spanish bank in around a month.
Becker was once estimated to be worth upwards of £100 million. But Mr Briggs conceded: “He is not a sophisticated individual when it comes to finances.”
In 2001 he was landed with divorce and paternity settlements totalling more than £20million to his first wife, Barbara, and Angela Ermakova, the Russian model who had his baby following an encounter in the broom cupboard of a London restaurant.
The next year Becker received a two-year suspended sentence for tax evasion and was ordered to pay £2.5million in back tax, fines, and costs after claiming Monaco as his main residence while spending much of his time in Munich.
In 2011 the Dubai property development to which he had lent his name, the Boris Becker Business Tower, went bust, while in 2012 a Spanish court ordered a house Becker had built for him in Majorca should be auctioned to pay a debt of £225,000 he owed a local landscape gardening company. In a separate civil court hearing he was ordered to hand a further £345,000 to a local building firm that complained that its bills had also gone unpaid.
Yesterday Arbuthnot Latham’s barrister Matthew Abraham argued there was a lack of evidence to support Becker’s claims that the remortgaging of his Majorcan property would go ahead soon and enable him to pay his debts.
Ms Registrar Derrett agreed, “with a degree of regret”, that there was a lack of evidence that his “substantial” debt would be paid soon and she refused to adjourn the case for a further 28 days.
She said of the former champion: “One has the impression of a man with his head in the sand.” When she was told during the hearing that Becker was now a television commentator, Ms Derrett replied that she knew perfectly
who he was, adding: “I remember watching him play on Centre Court, which probably shows my age.”
In a statement after the ruling Becker said it was “clear that I have the means to repay this debt” and he would seek to have the order set aside. He added: “In the meantime, I will concentrate on my work and in particular my presenting duties at Wimbledon for the BBC and other international outlets.”