OREANDA-NEWS  The founder of the London trading company XTX Markets, billionaire Alexander Gurko, headed The Sunday Times list of businessmen who paid the most taxes to the British treasury (The Tax List 2023).

Over the year, the 43-year-old entrepreneur paid £487 million ($602.8 million) in taxes in the UK, or £1.3 million ($1.6 million) a day, the newspaper writes. Thanks to this, he managed to move the leader of the rating of the last three years to the second place — the founder of the international bookmaker Bet365 Denise Coates (£460.2 million, or $ 569.6 million) and her family. Stephen Rubin (£392.3 million, or $485.7 million), co-owner and head of Pentland Group, specializing in the production of sporting goods, closes the top three with his family. Gerko was born in Moscow and received a doctorate in mathematics from Moscow State University. He has British citizenship, and, according to the publication, the billionaire recently renounced the Russian one. He started his career trading stocks at Deutsche Bank, later worked at the hedge fund GSA Capital, and in 2015 founded his own trading firm XTX Markets. She specializes in high-frequency trading based on algorithms and uses statistical models that analyze trading data.

In December, Bloomberg estimated Gerko's fortune at $6 billion. In Britain, The Sunday Times writes, he funds a number of projects to improve the teaching of mathematics, including evening classes and weekend classes for secondary school students. The publication calls Gerko a fan of science fiction and an outspoken critic of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. Gerko has been on The Tax List before. Last year, he entered the top 10 for the first time with taxes paid by £117.4 (about $145.2 million).