London wealth exodus accelerates as billionaires flee to Dubai, Monaco and Switzerland
Revolut chief executive Nik Storonsky and quant house luminary Alex Gerko both appeared in the top 10 of The Sunday Times Rich List for the first time, in a year when its author highlighted the extent of Britain’s wealth exodus.
As many as one in six of the individuals and families who appeared in the closely-followed ranking in 2024 did not feature in this year’s iteration, its compiler Robert Watts said, because many of the mainstays of previous lists had left the UK for lower-tax jurisdictions.
“Many foreign billionaires who have been living in the UK have… dropped out because they have moved away,” he said.
Sanjay and Dheeraj Hinduja, the British-Indian family who own the eponymous Mumbai-headquartered conglomerate, retained top spot in the annual survey of Britain’s wealthiest individuals, amassing a combined fortune of £38bn. The rest of the top three also remained unchanged from last year’s list, with secretive property magnates David and Simon Reuben and Leonard Blavatnik both boasting fortunes exceeding £25bn.
James Dyson was this year’s biggest faller, after the inventor’s firm was particularly adversely affected by Donald Trump’s harsh tariffs, Watts said. The hand dryer tycoon’s net wealth was found to have nearly halved from £20bn to £12bn over the course of the year, pushing him from fourth to 13th place.
City figures make the Rich List
City figures also featured prominently, with Revolut’s Storonsky breaking into the top 10 in the year his fintech juggernaut was granted a UK banking license and achieved a $75bn valuation during a November funding round. Alex Gerko, the enigmatic force behind quantitative trading firm XTX, was one place behind Storonsky in eighth position, with a fortune exceeding £16bn. Both founders were born in Russia but have renounced their Russian citizenship following Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
However, the report was overshadowed by the magnitude of the exodus of ultra-high-net-worth residents that the list revealed. For the first two decades of the 21st century, the annual who’s who of Britain’s super-rich charted a steady increase in fortunes, with rich list wealth growing nearly 600 percent between 2000 and 2022. But in recent years, growth in high-net-worth fortunes has stagnated, with its constituents’ wealth treading water and the number of billionaires decreasing.
More rich list members living abroad
The number of sterling-denominated billionaires in the UK peaked at 177 in 2022, according to The Sunday Times. This year’s tally of 157 was just one more than in 2025.
Watts also sounded the alarm on the number of British citizens included in the list who are now living abroad. Under the annual survey’s rules, foreign-born residents who leave automatically fall out of the rankings, but Brits who choose to live or move abroad remain on the list.
The author said he had seen a “sharp rise in the number of British nationals now resident in Dubai, Switzerland, and Monaco,” adding that the “twin exoduses” represent a concerning development for Britain’s economy and public finances.
“Will more of the wealthy now set up or grow their ventures overseas and in doing so create fewer jobs here?” he added. “How much tax – if any – will Rachel Reeves’ Treasury be able to extract from those affluent Brits who have now left the country?”
The government has been accused of driving super-rich residents away from Britain after unveiling a slew of new taxes targeting ultra-high-net-worth individuals’ assets. At her maiden Budget in 2024, Rachel Reeves moved forward with a promise to abolish the non-dom regime, on top of measures like introducing VAT on private school fees, raising capital gains tax, and ending several carve-outs for inheritance tax.
At her 2025 intervention, those measures were built upon with a so-called mansion tax on properties above £2m and further tightening inheritance tax loopholes.
The abolition of the non-dom regime, in particular, has forced several high-net-worth Brits away, including the former Goldman Sachs International chief Richard Gnodde and former Sunday Times Rich List regular and steel magnate, Lakshmi Mittal.
Only one billionaire was found to have moved to the UK in the past year, which was the US ambassador to the UK, Warren Stephens.
Editor-in-Chief
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
