Alexander Gerko founded his own trading company XTX Markets in 2015.
(Photo: AP)
Berlin A Russian-born businessman paid the most taxes in Britain last year – almost a year after tough sanctions were imposed on Russia and numerous seizures of Russian oligarchs’ assets.
The founder of London-based trading firm XTX Markets, billionaire Alexander Gerko, 43, paid £487 million ($602.8 million) in taxes to the British Treasury in 2022, or £1.3 million a day. This emerges from the “Tax List 2023” published by the “Sunday Times”.
Denise Coates (£460.2m), the founder of international bookmaker Bet365, and her family are second on the list. Stephen Rubin (£392.3m), co-owner and boss of sporting goods specialist Pentland Group, in third place.
Gerko was born in Moscow and holds a PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University. He holds British citizenship, and according to the newspaper, the billionaire recently renounced his Russian citizenship.
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He started his career as a stock trader at Deutsche Bank, later worked at hedge fund GSA Capital and founded his own trading company XTX Markets in 2015. It specializes in high-frequency trading based on algorithms and uses statistical models to analyze trading data.
In December, financial news agency Bloomberg estimated Gerko’s fortune at $6 billion. In the UK, writes the Sunday Times, he funds a number of projects to improve mathematics education, including evening and weekend courses for secondary school students.
In the publication, Gerko is described as a science fiction fanatic and outspoken critic of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Gerko was in the UK top 10 for the first time last year with £117.4million in taxes paid.
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