A once-close Italian clan, a luxury jewellery brand – and a nasty legal battle.
It seemed like a simple solution to a very high-net-worth concern. Shortly after her divorce from the jewellery tycoon Nicola Bulgari in 2005, Anna Bulgari created a trust drawn from the proceeds of her settlement. The Anna Bulgari Family Trust was intended to provide a steadily lucrative income for the couple’s three daughters, Veronica, Ilaria and Natalia, securing her daughters’ independence after her death.
Today, however, the prospect of a painful and public legal battle hangs over the dynasty. Anna Bulgari died in 2019 and the vast settlement she left is at the centre of a showdown: a case brought by Ilaria, 56, the middle sister, against her elder sibling Veronica, 58, who has overseen the trust. Ilaria claims Veronica has failed in her duties as a trustee and kept information from her, diluting their mother’s wish that the daughters’ portions of the trust should be handled equally.
The third reason is the charismatic figure of Jan Boyer, an entrepreneur and former economic adviser to George W. Bush, who arrived in her life in 2018. He has, she reckons, been traduced by her family. “Jan is being described as my ‘boyfriend’, as if I picked him up somewhere on the way. But he is my rock and a wonderful partner with a massive heart. I am close to his daughters and we are blessed we found each other at the right time. And in Swiss law, we are treated as married .
Today, she comes across as a more settled version of the vivacious blonde woman I first met around 2003. She arrived in London in search of a career in publishing, and soon married a mutual acquaintance, journalist William Cash, son of the Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash. “I ended up in this very Eurosceptic, conservative world, which was ironic as I had been a huge believer in European unity. But it was an experience and I have good memories of it.”There were, however, warning signs.
Ilaria read international politics and literature at Sarah Lawrence College, New York; Veronica went to the Courtauld in London, and Natalia, the youngest, stayed in New York. Although two of the daughters worked briefly in the business, none warmed to the prospect.spring of 2019, the family learnt that Anna’s cancer had spread. Gathered together in Millbrook, their Upstate New York country home, Boyer was there, too.