The widow of legendary property tycoon “Black” Jack Dellal is challenging the provisions made to her in his will, 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 Justice Mostyn at the High Court in London on 1 April.
Dellal, who died in 2012 aged 89, “to all intents and purposes left his entire estate” to his second wife, Ruanne Dellal, 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 4-5 times a year,” the judgment says, quoting Mrs 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 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.
