A SETTLEMENT will be finalised today in the cash-guzzling Thyssen family legal feud which was argued out in Bermuda's courts for nearly a year and a half, it is understood.

Three separate legal sources working on the case have confirmed that private talks going on all week between the parties are due to culminate in a deal today.

Several lawyers flew to the island from Britain to take part in the deliberations which included a court hearing in chambers on Wednesday.

The 81-year-old Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza has been attempting to wrest control of the $2.7 billion family fortune from his eldest son Georg.

With 32 lawyers from Bermuda and Britain working on it, the case has cost an estimated $600,000 per week - or well over $100 million in total - and has become the most expensive case in Bermuda's legal history.

Just short of 18 months of hearings in the Supreme Court ended 11 months ago when presiding judge Dennis Mitchell quit in a row over pay.

The deep complexity of the case was illustrated by the fact that the opening remarks of Michael Crystal, QC, for the Baron, took more than a year to plough through.

At issue is a continuity trust to which the Baron signed over the family business 18 years ago.

The trust immediately made the Baron's eldest son Georg the principal beneficiary. The Baron is claiming the trust and his son owe him $232 million in arrears with inflation and loss of value and he wants to re-establish his control of the family fortune.

Judge Mitchell quit the case last March after his demands for more money were turned down by Governor Thorold Masefield, who refused to renew the judge's three-year contract.

The trial was expected to run until 2003 and, had it done so, would have become the longest trial in Bermuda's legal history.

Lawyers from Bermuda firms Conyers Dill & Pearman, Cox, Hallett & Wilkinson, and Appleby, Spurling & Kempe, among others, have worked on the case.

The legal battle has attracted great attention from the European press who have often focused on the Baron's fifth wife Carmen (Tita) Cavera, a former Miss Spain.