It’s hard enough for couples in the public eye to go through a bitter divorce, but when they run a business together, things can go from bad to worse.

Such appears to be the case with the husband-wife team that founded London-based Ikos, one of Europe’s oldest hedge fund firms.

Martin Coward and Elena Ambrosiadou founded Ikos in 1992. Coward, who holds a Ph.D. in mathematics, gave the fund a quantitative strategy focus and, by 2009, it had about $3 billion in assets under management.

But feuding between the couple over the firm’s assets and an alleged affair of Coward’s has cost the firm investors, according to The New York Post, with AUM sinking to about $1.95 billion.

Things got so bad that when Coward was on vacation, his wife fired his team of researchers, The Post said. She also had police seize the firm’s private jet, forcing Coward to fly back from holiday on a commercial flight.

Coward left Ikos at the end of 2009 to start up his own firm.

Go to New York Post article

Related Stories
Cofounder Coward Gone From IKOS
Ikos Launches Global Macro Hedge Funds