UK loses more billionaires than any other country

The UK has lost the most billionaires of any country in the world over the last couple of years, new data has shown, exacerbating fears that the UK’s free-moving super-rich residents would continue to leave the country if forced to pay a wealth tax.
According to updated numbers from New World Wealth, Britain lost a quarter of its billionaire population over the course of 2023 and 2024, the highest share of any major economy including sanction-hit Russia. The country lost 18 billionaires to other jurisdictions over the two-year period, researchers said, taking the total number residing in the UK down to 72 by the end of 2024.
The figure is considerably higher than the 12 that quit second-placed China and the 10 that left India, which suffered the third largest exodus. Russia lost eight billionaires overall, the second-highest in percentage term. The findings will also not include the more recent high-profile departures from the UK of steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, chemicals tycoon Nassef Sawiris, or property investors Richard and Ian Livingstone.
All four billionaires left Britain since the start of this year, after the government announced a host of punitive tax rises targeted at the country’s wealthiest taxpayers, including the non-dom regime, applying VAT on private school fees and raising the top rate of capital gains tax.
Global wealth specialist at Utmost Wealth Solutions, Marc Acheson, said that a series of decisions by consecutive governments meant the findings were “unsurprising”.
“This outflow began in March 2024 when the Conservatives announced the end of the resident non-dom regime and then accelerated at pace following the measures announced at the Autumn Budget”, he said, adding: “As an internationally mobile group, they have the means and most incentive to leave.
“They are moving rapidly to countries that are competing aggressively to welcome them with more attractive regimes”.
The figures also bring into sharp relief growing fears that a wealth tax would accelerate the rate of departures from Britain, after a deluge of warnings from Tax lawyers and wealth advisors that the UK is losing its wealthiest residents at a record rate.
HMRC’s own data shows that the top one per cent of earners now pay 28 per cent of all income tax. That is a massive burden on a small group. When just one thousand of them leave, Britain doesn’t just lose their personal tax but also their business. It loses their spending too. The jobs they create are also lost. And the rest of the country — already bearing the weight of a cost-of-living crisis — is left to pick up the tab.
Keir Starmer and his spokesman have refused to rule out a blanket levy on wealth forming part of the government’s upcoming Budget, as he and Chancellor Rachel Reeves look to plug a roughly £20 billion hole in the public finances without raising any taxes on “working people”.
As recently as April, Reeves vowed she would not impose any new wealth taxes in the Autumn Budget. The outgoing director of the non-partisan Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, has previously said that implementing the levy would be “practically impossible”.
According to an analysis of Companies House data, 3,790 company directors removed Britain as their official country of residence between last October and last July, a steep rise from the 2,712 that did so over the same period the previous year. The data, which was compiled by the Financial Times, unearthed several high-profile business figures who had left the UK whose departures were not already known.
The former boss of London-listed consumer giant Reckitt Benckiser, Bart Becht, FTSE Russell brand’s founder Mark Makepeace and AC Milan and Miami Football Club-backer Ricardo Silva were all found to have left the UK since the Budget.
The United Arab Emirates enjoyed the largest influx of UK-based company directors, the data showed, with over 150 joining between April and June of this year.