Don Gallagher, right, at the west end production of “Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical” in London. Photographer: Dave M. Benett/Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase Co. (JPM) equity analyst
Peter Lawrence won a U.K. appeal cutting to 1.37 million pounds
($2.18 million) a divorce payout to his ex-civil partner, former
“Priscilla Queen of the Desert” star Donald Gallagher.

Lawrence must give Gallagher 33 percent of their assets
rather than the 42 percent share awarded by a lower court, a
three-judge panel at the Court of Appeal in London ruled today.

Under today’s decision, the banker will keep the London
apartment he purchased before the 11-year relationship began,
even though the property “soared” in value from 650,000 pounds
in 1997, when the couple moved in together, to 2.4 million
pounds. Gallagher got the couple’s second home, valued at nearly
900,000 pounds.

“If this were a heterosexual marriage, and he were the
female partner married to a wealthy City trader, he would have
walked away with a considerably greater sum,” Matt Baldwin, a
spokesman for Gallagher’s law firm Boodle Hatfield, said in a
phone interview referring to workers in London’s financial
district.

The decision comes about a year-and-a-half after the U.K.
Supreme Court took the country closer to U.S.-style divorces
with a ruling on pre-nuptial agreements, which are often used by
wealthy people marrying someone with less money. The October
2010 decision, on a settlement between a wealthy German heiress
and a former investment banker for New York-based JPMorgan, said
such accords can be given decisive weight in U.K. divorces.

Deferred Bonus

In today’s ruling on what lawyers called Britain’s highest-
value civil partnership divorce,

This article originally appeared on: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-29/jpmorgan-banker-gay-divorce-from-stage-star-sets-u-k-precedent.html