The hunt is on for suave City chancer’s millions

At first sight, it seemed City financier Robert ­Bonnier was yet another victim of the crunch. His £11 million house, a seven bedroom, three-storey home in Holland Park, has just been repossessed amid talk of sliding property values and general financial gloom. It might have notched up a record for repossessions, but wasn't the loss of Bonnier's house just another property crash story?

This 38-year-old entrepreneur is one of the most controversial figures in the City and the story behind the seizure of his house, told here for the first time, reads like a morality play for these troubled times. Indeed, eight Ilchester Place, W14, with its plans for an indoor swimming pool, a cinema and wine cellar, may be emblematic in the tale of a brilliant, wealthy man whose gambling for multi-million pound stakes spelt personal disaster.

Bonnier had already seen a fortune estimated at more than £150 million slip through his fingers. The daring — some would say desperate — moves he made to try to get it back came to a head when his luck ran out, his betting strategy collapsed and the bank moved in on his house.

Few will weep for Bonnier. His career in the City has earned him the reputation of a chancer, a man who once incurred a £290,00 fine — a record at the time — for misleading the stock market. He was a prominent player during the dot.com era and went on to take a role in some of the City's juicier deals of recent years.

Bonnier, suave and multilingual, is the ultimate charmer who enchanted ­investors. Generous to a fault, he ­entertained lavishly and once sent his personal jet to Switzerland to pick up a colleague who was on holiday and then, when their discussion was over, flew him back again.

Now he is a hunted man. In the next two weeks, the Evening Standard can reveal, court action will be launched to try to get him to pay £14 million. He has disclosed assets of around £9 million but he is currently involved in divorce proceedings from his second wife, Marina, and she is understood to be making a substantial claim on his ­fortune.

For now, Bonnier is invisible. Efforts to contact him proved fruitless and he is believed to be moving between the Far East and London. No one really knows how much money he has, but even that is now academic. The people after him say they will pursue him into bankruptcy, if necessary.

Many will see Bonnier's predicament as the falling-to-earth of a shooting star. He was born in Holland to a wealthy family that encouraged his entrepreneurial instincts. When, at the age of 13, he was awarded compensation for a sports field injury, he invested the money in shares. He prospered and a passion for the profits of the market was born.

In 1992, aged 23, he moved to London and began working for the Swiss Bank Corporation, now part of UBS. But ­Bonnier, driven by a restless ambition, was not content to sit behind a screen making money for other people.

So in 1995 he joined a company called Freepages, a business directory. He later helped it float on AIM and became its chief executive. Freepages turned into Scoot.com, one of the early successes of the dot.com revolution. At one point the rush for shares in Scoot.com valued the company at more than £2.5 billion. ­Bonnier's share was worth £150 million.

When the bubble burst, he was left with virtually nothing. Far worse off were Scoot.com shareholders who stuck with the company. Around 17,000 of them found their shares were worth less than the £7 it would have cost to sell them.
But Bonnier had tasted the fruits of stock market success and he wanted more. He re-emerged, this time in the guise of corporate raider. Using an investment fund called Indigo he went after some high-profile companies, buying large shareholdings and sparking talk of takeover bids.

One was Eidos, the computer games developer behind the Lara Croft Tomb Raider series. But as Bonnier's interest in the company reached 8 per cent, the share price dropped by a third. By some estimates, he lost £6 million. On another deal, involving Regus, the serviced office company, he did make money but, some would argue, at severe cost to his ­reputation.

Around Christmas 2002, Bonnier entranced the stock market. In a series of announcements he let it be known Indigo was building a stake in Regus. At one point, he claimed to own 15 per cent of the company's shares.

They soared as takeover fever took hold. But Bonnier was in no position to mount a bid for the company. His shares, it was discovered later, were positions in contracts for difference, merely a form of bet on the share price.

The Financial Services Authority said the claims he made created a "false and misleading impression". In 2004 he was fined £290,000, at that time a record for a penalty awarded against an individual. His fund, Indigo, was ordered to pay £65,000. He and the company were also censured by the Takeover Panel for putting out inaccurate information.

Bonnier has since sought to play down the affair. "There was absolutely no intent on my part to mislead the ­market," he said.

That may be so. But he walked away with profits of £643,225. And when he re-emerged in the City, as chief executive and main shareholder of Future Internet Technologies, an AIM-listed cash shell in 2006, the stock exchange looked very carefully at his new role.

Bonnier was relaxed. He had been travelling in Latin America and Asia and had extensively widened his experience of world markets. He had a £13 million house in Holland Park — a ­predecessor to the one recently repossessed — an executive jet and the multi-millionaire lifestyle that had always seemed his by right.

He was highly knowledgeable about new technology and seemed convinced he could restore the fortune he lost in Scoot.com through investing in high-tech companies. One that captured his interest was a telecommunications business called Artilium. Through two companies registered in the Channel Islands, Bonnier began trading in Artilium shares with a derivatives brokerage called Global Trader Europe (GTE).

GTE was part of an international company that catered to high-rollers on the world's stock markets. It specialised in Contracts For Difference — CFDs — the instruments that Bonnier used when he fell foul of the regulators in the Regus affair.

Bonnier entered into CFDs on Artilium shares last year but ran into trouble. His bets did not pay off and his positions had become untenable. GTE made a number of margin calls — requests for him to pay in money to bridge the gap between his investment and his exposure — but Bonnier was unable to pay.

Then he reached what was meant to be a settlement. His Channel Island companies were sold but he stood guarantee for their obligations to GTE and as part of the guarantee handed over shares in Cristal, the company to which he had assigned ownership of the house in ­Holland Park.
The document, dated 16 January, 2008, indicates that the house could be sold for £17 million, enough to cover ­Bonnier's debts.

But the agreement could not save GTE. By one estimate, it was owed a total of £14 million by Bonnier and companies linked to him and it went into administration earlier this year.

Accountants Smith and Williamson began unravelling the company's affairs and quickly established that Bonnier was their main target. GTE investors were owed a total of £33 million. Around £18 million in assets were identified and Smith and Williamson looked to Bonnier for most of the rest.

But the company's accountants swiftly discarded the settlement he had made to try to clear his debts to GTE. The house at Ilchester Place, they discovered, was effectively worthless to them. It had been put on the market by American film producer Charles Schneer for £8.6 million. But when it aroused intense interest, it was decided to sell it by sealed bid. Bonnier, offering more than £11 million, was the successful purchaser.

He immediately commissioned plans for an extension and extensive refurbishment, all of which stalled when his share gamble collapsed. Smith and Williamson discovered he had bought the property with a £9 million mortgage, taken out with Barclays bank. Payments had not been met and, with mounting interest, the bank was owed well over £10 million. Barclays repossessed the property and immediately put it on the market for £10 million but a source said there has been no interest at that price.

Now Smith and Williamson say they have written the house — and the "settlement" deal it was part of — out of the Bonnier script.

"We are going for the full amount he owes," Stephen Cork, of Smith and Williamson, said. "That amount is £14 million and we will pursue him into bankruptcy, if necessary."

He confirmed court proceedings will be launched in the next two weeks.

A spokesman for the majority of GTE creditors told the Standard: "We would very much like to get our money back. He made a guarantee and we want him to stand by it. The problem is, we have no idea where he is and from what we can gather he operates through a web of offshore companies. Assets may be hard to find."

It is an irony of the affair that a £11 million London house, once considered one of Bonnier's main assets, was ultimately of no comfort to his creditors, or him.