Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and owner of Chelsea Football Club and his wife Daria Zhukova have announced they are to separate after 10 years together.
The couple, who have two children, revealed the news in a joint statement.
“After 10 years together, the two of us have made the difficult decision to separate,” it read.
Abramovich, 50, is the world’s 139th richest person, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated fortune of almost £7bn ($49.1bn).
The statement said the pair “remain close friends, parents, and partners in the projects we developed together. We are committed to jointly raising our two children.”
The Russian, who has owned Chelsea since 2003, divorced his second wife Irina in 2007.
Zhukova, 36, is an art collector, who is on the board of New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
They added in their statement that they will “continue to work together as co-founders of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and the New Holland Island cultural centre in Saint Petersburg”.
Fiercely media shy, Abramovich kept his marriage to Zhukova from the public for many years.
Dasha and Roman are understood to have met at a New Year’s Eve party hosted by her father in 2005. She was always referred to as his girlfriend until, in a 2015 magazine interview, she revealed that the couple had actually tied the knot in secret in 2008. Dasha, who is on the board of the Metropolitan Museum, is credited with introducing her husband to the art world, which in turn led to him establishing himself as one of the world’s leading collectors of modern and contemporary art.
