Love is priceless—except when it’s followed by a really expensive break-up. These powerhouse grads have been unlucky in love, and they’re paying for it.
The Aga Khan faces a settlement of up to $1 billion in his divorce from his wife of eight years, the Begum Inaara Khan, from whom he reportedly has been separated since 2003. The German princess, also a former pop singer, may be entitled to as much as half of the estimated $1.8 billion the horse breeder/philanthropist/descendant of Muhammad reportedly made during the marriage, plus some of his future earnings. This is the Aga Khan’s second divorce.
Staples founder Tom Stemberg ended his second marriage, to Dola Hamilton Stemberg, in 2005, soon after his girlfriend, Katherine Chapman, gave birth to their son. Hamilton Stemberg accused the office-supply tycoon of substance abuse and squandering the family fortune on Chapman’s Canadian shoe business. Press reports said that she could seek stock worth tens of millions and property on Beacon Hill and in Buzzard’s Bay. That split came after Stemberg’s 1987 divorce from first wife Maureen Sullivan Stemberg, who received around 500,000 shares of Staples stock worth $2.25 each.
Breaking up was also hard to do for Viacom and CBS chairman Sumner Redstone, whose divorce from Phyllis Redstone became final in July 2002. Redstone faced heat not only from his wife of 52 years, who demanded $3 billion after hearing of the media mogul’s jaunt to Paris with another woman, but from his son, Brent Redstone. Earlier this year, Brent filed a lawsuit claiming that his father transferred a multimillion-dollar company-owned suite in Manhattan’s Pierre Hotel to Phyllis Redstone during the divorce proceedings.
Jeffrey Skilling, the notorious former CEO of Enron, handed over a substantial amount of the company’s doomed stock to his first wife, Susan Lowe, during their 1997 divorce settlement. Fortunately for Lowe, who was married to Skilling for 22 years, she sold the stock for $14 million in October 2000, about a year before the share price crashed. Skilling could have learned something from her timing; he has since been sentenced to 24 years in prison.
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