UK loses more billionaires than any other country

Wednesday 09 July 2025 6:31 pm

The UK has misplaced essentially the most billionaires of any nation on the planet within the final two years, recent knowledge has proven, exacerbating fears that Britain’s footloose super-rich residents would proceed to flee the nation if pressured to pay a wealth tax.

Based on up to date numbers from New World Wealth, the UK misplaced 1 / 4 of its billionaire inhabitants over the course of 2023 and 2024, the best share of any main economic system together with sanction-hit Russia.

The nation misplaced 18 billionaires to different jurisdictions over the two-year interval, researchers mentioned, taking the full quantity residing within the UK right down to 72 by the top of 2024.

The determine is significantly increased than the 12 that stop second-placed China and the ten that left India, which suffered the third largest exodus. Russia misplaced eight billionaires total; the second-highest in proportion phrases.

The findings will even not embrace the more moderen high-profile departures from the UK of metal magnate Lakshmi Mittal, chemical substances tycoon Nassef Sawiris, or property buyers Richard and Ian Livingstone.

All 4 billionaires left Britain because the begin of this yr, after the federal government introduced a number of punitive tax rises focused on the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers, together with abolishing the non-dom regime, making use of VAT on non-public faculty charges and elevating the highest fee of capital positive aspects tax.

Marc Acheson, world wealth specialist at Utmost Wealth Options, advised Metropolis AM {that a} sequence of selections by consecutive governments meant the findings had been “unsurprising”.

“This outflow started in March 2024 when the Conservatives introduced the top of the resident non-dom regime after which accelerated at tempo following the measures introduced on the Autumn Finances,” he mentioned, including: “As an internationally cell group, they’ve the means and most incentive to depart.

“They’re transferring quickly to nations which are competing aggressively to welcome them with extra engaging regimes.”

Wealth tax might drive extra billionaires from UK

The figures additionally carry into sharp reduction rising fears {that a} wealth tax would speed up the speed of exits from Britain, after a deluge of warnings from tax attorneys and wealth advisers that the UK is dropping its wealthiest residents at a document fee.

Keir Starmer and his spokesman have refused to rule out a blanket levy on wealth forming a part of the federal government’s upcoming Finances, as he and Chancellor Rachel Reeves look to plug a roughly £20bn gap within the public funds with out elevating any taxes on “working folks”.

As just lately as April, Reeves vowed she wouldn’t impose any new wealth taxes within the Autumn Finances.

“We’re not concerned about a wealth tax,” she advised The Telegraph. “Our precedence is to develop the economic system and that’s the way in which that you simply make working folks higher off and safe higher public funds.”

Since then, the Treasury has been pressured to climate a storm of upper state spending commitments, together with increased borrowing prices and several other costly U-turns just like the £4bn resolution to row again from welfare reforms.

Economists stay sceptical {that a} blanket tax on wealth would generate significant revenues for the Treasury, with a number of the opinion that the levy might price the Exchequer cash total.

Paul Johnson, the outgoing director of the non-partisan Institute for Fiscal Research, has beforehand mentioned that implementing the levy could be “virtually not possible”.

And pointing to failed makes an attempt in different nations, Tax Coverage Associates boss Dan Neidle mentioned it could be “conceited” of the Labour Celebration to imagine it could work in Britain.