The widow of “legendary” property tycoon Jack Dellal is challenging the provisions made to her in his will, it emerged today, claiming that the extent of his wealth at the time of his death was hugely underestimated.
Details of the case came out in a judgment relating to a preliminary issue that was released by Mostyn J at the High Court in London today.
Dellal (pictured), who died in 2012 aged 89, “to all intents and purposes left his entire estate” to his second wife Ruanne according to a judgment. However, when the disclosed assets were at valued at £15.4m she took legal action.
“The claimant says that this is an absurd presentation of the true scale of his personal wealth at his death,” the judgment says. “If it had shrunk to £15.4m, then in the period before his death he must have given most of it away,” without his wife knowing, the ruling said.
Dellal was ranked number 40 in the 2011 Estates Gazette Rich List with an estimated fortune of £445m. His widow is seeking “reasonable provisions” from his estate and is seeking an order against his “net estate” which includes more properties than his “actual death estate.”
The judgment contains details of Dellal’s love of gambling, which earned him the sobriquet “Black Jack.”
“The claimant says she regularly witnessed Jack winning or losing between £600,000 and £1m a night, and says that this would happen four to five times a year,” the judgment says, quoting Ruanne Dellal’s lawyer.
Dellal was born in Manchester in 1923 to exiled Iraqi Jewish parents who worked in the city’s textiles industry. He initially made his money in merchant banking and his big break came in 1972 when he sold his bank Dalton Barton to Keyser Ullman for £58m just before the financial crisis of 1973.
In 1974, he shifted into property when he set up Allied Commercial with Stanley Van Gelder.
Ruanne Dellal v Guy Dellal & Ors, High Court Family Division, (Mostyn J), 1 April 2015
Robert Miles QC, Andrew Child and Seth Cunningham (instructed by Harcus Sinclair) for the claimant
Tracey Angus QC and Jordan Holland (instructed by Mishcon De Reya) for the 1st to 6th and 8th defendants.
Eason Rajah QC and Leon Pickering (instructed by Charles Russell Speechlys) for the 7th defendant.
