Billionaire who tried to buy Liverpool FC goes to war with ex-fiancee over £400,000 engagement ring

• American tycoon Robert Agostinelli has launched a legal battle against his ex-partner Charlotte Lucas
• He is demanding she returns the engagement ring he bought her
• The couple split after six years together with each party claiming to have ended to relationship
  

By Ian Gallagher for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 20:42 EDT, 1 March 2014 | Updated: 20:42 EDT, 1 March 2014

Robert Agostinelli has launched a legal battle against his former financee Charlotte Lucas, (pictured) to force her to return a £400,000 engagement ring he bought her

As a spectacularly successful financier, billionaire Robert Agostinelli might be expected to show a generous side to the women in his life.

But the hedge fund boss has launched an extraordinary legal battle against his former fiancee – to force her to return a £400,000 engagement ring he bought her.

Mr Agostinelli, an American tycoon who once tried to buy Liverpool Football Club, has been branded ungallant for making the legal demands against Formula One public relations executive Charlotte Lucas after their six-year relationship fell apart.

‘No one is particularly impressed at his asking for the ring back, said one friend. ‘It’s hardly what you would call chivalrous. And it’s not like he needs the money.’

Mr Agostinelli met Ms Lucas in 2007 and proposed a few months later, but the relationship is said to have soured after she discovered that he had been pictured holidaying with a Dutch model.

Friends of Ms Lucas say the couple had another furious row last year and she called off the engagement and moved out of his £8 million London home. It is understood that Mr Agostinelli, 60, disputes this and insists he ended it.

With both sides refusing to yield, the extraordinary dispute over the ring is now destined for the Supreme Court in New York – and at its heart will be the question of where the financier proposed.

If it was in New York, as Mr Agostinelli claims, then he might have a case, although not a strong one. But if it can be shown that he gave her the ring outside of the United States, the law will favour Ms Lucas.

In Britain, for instance, an engagement ring is classed as a gift  and always remains the property  of the recipient.

Mr Agnostinelli’s lawyers made clear their demands in a forceful letter to Ms Lucas in October. In it, they set a deadline by which the ring should be returned, though that is now thought to have passed.

Matrimonial law expert Nadia Beckett, a senior partner at Beckett Solicitors in London, said: ‘I have never come across a case like this, it is astonishing.

‘He sounds like a very bitter man. It might be an option for her to forestall any action in the US by bringing an action here against him under the Married Women’s Property Act.

‘I believe that part of the purpose of an engagement ring, historically, was to provide security for the bride-to-be. If the engagement was broken off, particularly if it was broken off by the man, it served as financial compensation.’

Mr Agostinelli is the co-founder of the Rhone Group, the New York and London based private equity firm. Before that he was said to have played a pivotal role in building the asset management firm Lazard.

In the book The Last Tycoons: The Secret History Of Lazard Frères & Co, dollar billionaire Agostinelli is described as a ‘suave, sophisticated, energetic international financier with extravagant tastes and slicked-back jet-black hair’ It describes how he sent luxury Frette sheets by FedEx to his hotel rooms ahead of his arrival and always travelled with his personal gourmet chef.

Privately-educated Ms Lucas, who grew up in Hertfordshire, was newly single when she first met Mr Agostinelli having been previously married to another financier.

Her friends say she has so far ignored the ‘shocking’ legal demand to return the ring.

However she has been warned by her solicitor that should the claim be approved in the American courts she could be barred from entering the country by customs. It is understood the ring cost £250,000 but was valued last year at £400,000.

Robert Agostinelli (left) and his former financee Charlotte Lucas, (right) split after six years together

Contacted yesterday, Ms Lucas refused to discuss the dispute,  although  a friend said ‘Charlotte was deeply in love with Robert and had hoped that he would eventually grow up.  But it seems she ran out of patience with him.’  

A spokesman for Mr Agostinelli, who counts former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and former US President George Bush among his friends, also declined to comment.

In the US, disputes over engagement rings are not uncommon and most states have laws governing ownership. Many states consider the ring a ‘conditional gift’ until the wedding day. This means that regardless of who might pull out, the ring must be returned.

A New York judge ruled in 2006 that a woman could keep her diamond engagement ring because her fiance was not divorced from his previous wife when he proposed.

In certain states, determining who gets the ring rests on who called off the wedding. And some states treat a ring given on a birthday, Christmas or Valentine’s Day as an unconditional gift.