A staggering £682million payout has landed in the hands of Alex Gerko, Britain’s top taxpayer and founder of cutting-edge trading giant XTX Markets.
The mathematician, 46, secured the windfall as his share of £1.28billion in profits distributed among 31 partners at the firm he built.
With an estimated fortune of £12billion, Mr Gerko ranks among the country's wealthiest residents. In 2023 alone, he paid £665million in tax, cementing his reputation as Britain’s biggest individual contributor to the Treasury.
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The technology mogul has earned the moniker "king of the geeks" for his firm's sophisticated computational methods that deliver consistent advantages in executing trades worth billions each hour.
XTX Markets uses advanced Nvidia processors housed in a supercomputing centre in Iceland to predict market moves with remarkable accuracy.
This technology allows the firm to trade more competitively than rivals, handling around £185billion worth of deals every day.
Mr Gerko set up the London-based company in 2015 after moving from Moscow to work at Deutsche Bank. He now owns 75 per cent of the business.
In 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Mr Gerko gave up his Russian citizenship and has since donated tens of millions of pounds to groups supporting Ukraine.
The technology allows the firm to trade more competitively than rivals
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Patriotic Millionaires claim a 2% tax on the richest 20,000 people in Britain would fill the £22bn black hole
| Patriotic Millionaires UKHe also funds a wide range of charitable causes. Concerned about falling maths standards in Britain, he has opened several specialist schools. His philanthropy also includes support for environmental projects and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Despite his vast wealth, Mr Gerko has expressed backing for wealth taxation, stating: "I am very happy to pay a ton of taxes."
Mr Gerko lives in a 150-acre estate in the Chiltern Hills, once owned by philanthropist Lady Helen Hamlyn, known locally as the “Teletubby House” because of its distinctive sunken design.
His investment activities include stakes in prominent artificial intelligence ventures such as Silicon Valley's Anthropic and the British autonomous vehicle company Wayve.
Mr Gerko maintains an active presence on LinkedIn, where he shares candid views on various topics. He has voiced strong criticism of Britain's online safety legislation and the BBC's reporting on the Gaza conflict.
"The UK will soon have about as much freedom of speech as Russia if we don't stop this," he declared last month regarding British online safety regulations.
The financier faces an ongoing legal battle that has reached the Supreme Court. The dispute, originating from his tenure at GSA Capital hedge fund, concerns HMRC's classification of partner payments between 2010 and 2015.
Gerko is one of the UK’s richest people and the country’s biggest individual taxpayer
| GETTY
Tax authorities insisted these distributions should face income tax rates rather than corporation tax levels
| GETTYTax authorities insisted these distributions should face income tax rates rather than corporation tax levels.
Mr Gerko characterised this as "massive double taxation," though he noted the disputed sums were modest relative to the billions he has contributed in taxes throughout his career.
To manage his growing wealth, the Russia-born mathematician set up a family office last year, named Cromulon Capital after a human head-shaped planet from the sci-fi show Rick and Morty.
The number of quant traders working at XTX and earning a share of profits rose from 25 in 2023 to 30 in 2024. Overall, the company is much smaller than rival trading houses, employing about 250 people.