Former Goldman Sachs banker who used joint account to pay for affair stripped of millions in court fight with ex

A former Goldman Sachs banker who splashed thousands from his marital joint account, secretly treating his “expensive” mistress, has been stripped of £4m after losing a divorce battle with his superrich ex-wife.

Ardal Loh-Gronager married “enormously wealthy” businesswoman and heiress Wei-Lyn Loh in 2019, after quitting work to support her and oversee the refurbishment of their mansion in Avenue Road, Primrose Hill, London – one of the UK's most expensive streets, where houses can sell for more than £20m.

The couple split in 2023 – following the revelation that he had conducted “an expensively financed relationship...parallel to his marriage” during which he paid cash to his mistress from his and Ms Loh's joint account, often disguised as payments for “flowers”, and even let her use his £200,000 Bentley, which had been a romantic pre-marriage gift to him from his wife.

Mr Loh-Gronager, 35, had been set to receive a £6,449,802 payout after the break-up under a prenup agreement.

But his 43-year-old ex – a successful businesswoman and family trust beneficiary – took him to court, accusing him of already having received about £4m by using joint account money for his investments and by transferring money from her account to his.

The former banker had also sought to “undermine, harass and unsettle” his ex, sending a “lacklustre” PI to stand outside her house pretending to be a doorstepping journalist, and had set up a private Instagram profile to publish photos of her.

After a trial at the High Court, Mr Justice Cusworth found that Mr Loh-Gronager's payout should be slashed by around £4m to £2,369,385, due to the amounts he had already received and his general conduct, including “doctoring” emails to boost his case in court.

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He said Mr Loh-Gronager had made regular payments from the couple's joint account to his girlfriend and had even transferred £1m from his wife's account on the day she was undergoing a therapy session prior to the end of their relationship.

“The fact that the husband began to take amounts from the joint account almost as soon as it was set up suggests that he has throughout the marriage been preparing the ground for as lucrative a separation as he could contrive,” said the judge.

He added: “He has taken significant sums during the marriage from joint accounts funded by the wife. These accounts, pursuant to their agreement, were intended to provide primarily for the funding of their joint living expenses, as he knew.”

The husband has then essentially put those funds into investments and accounts in his own name, later to maintain them to be his separate property.

“He has then during the proceedings sought to undermine, harass and unsettle the wife, in the hope that she could be deterred from fighting on against him.

“First, by the unhelpful instruction of the lacklustre private detective; and second, by the setting up and promulgating of the Instagram account that he used to publish photographs of the wife, with the object as I find of belittling her and embarrassing her, without allowing her to know exactly where and to whom the images had been published.

“I find that he has callously and quite deliberately sought to cause upset to the wife in the hope that she would be persuaded to drop the case and leave him with the outcome he was seeking.”

The court heard the couple began living together in 2015 and married in 2019, with the husband – who had worked for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and latterly Credit Suisse – quitting to oversee an expensive refurbishment of their Avenue Road mansion.

Although Mr Loh-Gronager had himself been successful, Mrs Loh was “enormously wealthy”, with most of her money sunk in business assets, as well as being the beneficiary of a family trust.

Their prenup allowed for Mr Loh-Gronager to receive a lump sum if they divorced, increasing with each year that they remained married, meaning that by the time they split he was due over £6.4m.

However, the case went to court after Mrs Loh argued that his payout should be slashed as he had already received about £4m of her money by transfers from joint accounts she financed and her own.

Mr Loh-Gronager fought the case on the basis that the sums transferred were a continuation of a pattern of “transfers and gifts” to him which began before their marriage, and were to provide him with “financial security”. He suggested his ex was only now trying to undo the gifts “out of unhappiness and bitterness”.

As part of his case, Mr Loh-Gronager put forward a series of emails which he said showed that his ex-wife had been aware of certain transfers and their reasons.

But pointing out that he had not provided the actual emails, but instead pdf copies, the judge found that they had in fact been “created and/or doctored” by Mr Loh-Gronager to boost his case.

“He has sought to undermine the integrity of the entire court process by his attempt to create false evidence in the shape of the three emails, two erroneously altered to appear as if they had been blind copied to the wife, and the third entirely concocted,” said the judge.

The judge found that just over £2m which came from their mortgage account and was put into Mr Loh-Gronager's business should be taken as part of his entitlement under the prenup.

Sums totalling £655,000 taken from their joint account and ultimately invested in his business could also not be said to be his separate property and were in fact part of his prenup entitlement, he continued.

Mr Loh-Gronager claimed that £1m which went from his wife's account to his via the joint account, one day in April 2023, had been a “gift” made by her in a “desperate attempt” to save their marriage.

But the judge said the alleged gift had to be considered in the context of what had been occurring in the couple's lives in the months preceding it.

“The husband accepts that he began his relationship with another person, his current partner, at the end of November, although he denies that it became physical until late January 2023,” he said.

“Although little turns on it, I consider it far more likely that their physical relationship began in November 2022, given that they were holidaying in some style together already by the early months of 2023.

Justice Cusworth noted Mr Loh-Gronager first paid his new partner, £5,000, on 27 November 2022 and made “frequent but irregular payments to her thereafter”, noting that is “very clear that by the first weeks of 2023 the husband was engaged in an expensively financed relationship with his new partner, in parallel to his marriage”.

When Mr Loh-Gronager went on holiday with his wife, Justice Cusworth noted, he directed staff to make his Bentley “available for his new partner to use”.

The court heard Mr Loh-Gronager acknowledged the new relationship, in early April 2023, and that his wife, on 8 April, arranged to have an online counselling session with her therapist, to discuss how she was feeling.

“The wife says that after their conversation, but just before the session with her therapist commenced and, in her absence, the transfer of £1m was made first from her sole account into the parties' joint current account,” Justice Cusworth said.

“The husband says that she made this transfer, in his presence, which she denies. What is accepted is that immediately thereafter, he took the funds from the joint account into his own account.

While she was in the therapy session, Mr Loh-Gronager produced a document in which he set out their ‘needs’ in the context of a breakup, which Mrs Loh said she had not been expecting.

“In all of the circumstances, I am entirely satisfied that I prefer and accept the wife's account of this day, and I accept her evidence that she has no recollection of making the transfer from her own account,” said the judge."

Justice Cusworth reduced the amount Mr Loh-Gronager will receive £2,369,385.

His judgement in the case was delivered in October, but has only now been made public.