Top Bermuda insurance executive John Charman has been given permission to take his appeal against a $48 million ($94 million) divorce settlement to Britain’s Court of Appeal.

The 54-year-old Axis Capital Holdings Ltd. chief executive was ordered in July to pay his former wife what is believed to be the biggest divorce award in British legal history.

His case, in which he will argue that his $20 million offer to his former wife was more than adequate, has been listed for hearing from March 7 next year, the website This is London reported yesterday.

Beverley Charman, 53, was awarded a total of $48 million, including $8 million in assets which were already in her name, having rejected the earlier proposal by her former husband.

A separate trust fund for their sons of $40 million had already been established.

Mr. Charman said yesterday through his solicitors, Withers: “I hope that by appealing against this order I will be able to help bring some clarity, fairness and coherence into the law.”

Mr. Charman had been told that his argument that he should keep most of the couple’s money because he had earned it was old-fashioned and anachronistic, This is London reported.

Divorce lawyers said at the time of the ruling, which reduced Mr. Charman’s wealth to around $87 million, that the case was likely to have ramifications for the forthcoming case between Heather Mills and Sir Paul McCartney.

In his July judgment in the High Court on the Charman case, Mr Justice Coleridge indicated he would have liked a jury to help him to decide an appropriate award.

Writing recently in the Inner Temple journal, Lord Justice Thorpe, Vice President of the Family Division, drew attention to the huge discretion vested in judges when deciding settlements.

The senior judge also highlighted the outdated nature of divorce law and House of Lords’ decisions which had “dismantled the yardstick of reasonable requirements”.

The President of the Family Division, Sir Mark Potter, said publicly at a conference recently that the House of Lords’ decision in two high-profile divorce cases had failed to bring clarity to the divorce courts.

In these two big money cases, heard together at the House of Lords, the Law Lords came down on the side of the ex-wives.

Melissa Miller kept the $5 million she was awarded out of her ex-husband Alan’s $17.5 million fortune and Julia McFarlane was entitled to $250,000 a year from her ex-husband Kenneth for life — not just the five years decided by the Court of Appeal.

Mr. and Mrs. Charman were married in 1976 when neither had significant resources, according to his lawyers. When they first married, they lived with her parents.

During the 27-year marriage, Mr. Charman built up considerable wealth in the insurance market in the City of London. He sold his Lloyd’s agency, Tarquin, to Ace Ltd. in 1998 for 70.6 million Ace shares.

He left Ace in 2001, forming Axis Capital later that year with backing from private equity investors including Trident III, then a fund managed by Marsh & McLennan’s capital management arm, J.P. Morgan Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners, the Blackstone Group and Credit Suisse First Boston.

Earlier this month, Axis said Mr. Charman would sell some of his shares in the company to fund the dovorce settlement.

Mr. Charman directly owns 587,504 Axis shares, worth about $19 million, after selling 200,000 shares on November 3, according to a November 6 filing.

In August he sold 497,704 Axis shares owned by a trust in the names of his children. That trust and another family trust hold 2.3 million shares, according to the November 6 filing.

Based on Axis Capital’s closing price of $32.56 earlier this month, Mr. Charman would have to sell 2.8 million of his 3.0 million Axis shares to fund the full amount awarded in the divorce. That is roughly 1.8 percent of the total Axis shares outstanding.

Axis shares closed at $34.51 on Wednesday. The New York Stock Exchange was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday yesterday.

This is London said Mr. Justice Coleridge accepted when he first heard the case that Mr. Charman had made an “exceptional contribution” to the marriage. In early 2003 Mr. Charman moved to Bermuda and separated from his wife, who continues to live in England.

In June, 2004 Mrs. Charman petitioned for divorce in the UK and after various additional applications, a decree nisi was granted in April, 2005.

Mr. Charman contended that, whatever the size of the matrimonial assets he had accumulated, his wife should be awarded substantially less than an equal share because of his unique and exceptional contribution to the creation of the family’s wealth.

Mr Charman believes that the assets left in the Dragon Trust, set up in 1987 and now based in Bermuda, should be left entirely out of the settlement because they were deposited in a “dynastic” trust for the longer-term benefit of members of his family and he does not have access to or control over those assets.