‘I would like to give something back to Britain.’ So said the hedge fund billionaire Chris Rokos after donating a cool £190million to Cambridge University in March via what was billed as the ‘biggest single donation to be made to a British university in modern times’.
It wasn’t the only large cheque he’d just written, either: the bespectacled tycoon had at around the same time settled an income tax demand for £330million, which is enough to cover the wages of roughly 10,000 newly qualified nurses and made him Britain’s third biggest payer of income tax for the year.
Then there were ongoing bills for doing up Tottenham House, a 200-room stately home near Marlborough in Wiltshire, which Rokos had purchased in 2018.
In one of the most expensive renovations in UK history, some £175million was then funnelled to a small army of architects, builders, carpenters and plumbers, along with various contractors in their supply chain. The Wiltshire Gazette, which has been closely following the ‘modernisation of the property for 21st-century living,’ reported in June that the financier ‘hopes to move in with his family from next summer’.
That, however, was then. For in a severe blow to both HMRC and the white van men of the M4 corridor, it emerged yesterday that the 55-year-old father of five is moving to Athens, where his firm Rokos Capital Management will open an office.
Like an ever-increasing number of billionaires, Rokos appears to have taken the view that Greece – where ultra-wealthy foreigners are required to pay a flat rate of 100,000 euros (£86,000) on income earned abroad – offers a more convivial environment for wealth creation than the UK, where some 40 per cent of their earnings ends up with the Government.
Or to put things another way, this fully-paid-up Master of the Universe appears to have decided that (on the tax front, at least) he’s given quite enough back to Britain, thank you very much.
This is not to criticise Rokos, who hails from a relatively modest background, attended a state primary school in west London before winning a scholarship to Eton, and doubtless owes his professional success to a combination of singular talent and a gruelling work ethic.
Chris Rokos, a hedge fund manager worth an estimated £800million, is leaving the UK for Greece
He has already contributed handsomely to the UK’s coffers, over more than three decades in the City, and is perfectly entitled to up sticks for sunnier climes.
The villain of this tale is instead our economically incoherent Government, which claims (in the words of Chancellor John Healey this week) to be building ‘a country of wealth creation’ while simultaneously pursuing Old Labour tax-and-spend policies that are pushing an endless succession of wealth creators overseas.
Take, for example, Christian Angermayer, a German-born investor who was until last year one of the 200 richest residents here. But he decamped to Switzerland last year, blaming Labour’s changes to the tax regime as a ‘death blow’ to London.
Take also John Fredriksen, a Norwegian shipping magnate who closed his Chelsea office and moved to the United Arab Emirates, declaring that Britain had ‘gone to hell’. Or Slavica Malic, the former Mrs Bernie Ecclestone who railed against how ‘awful’ taxmen were and is now resident in Monaco.
You don’t have to like the super-rich, or what they stand for, to understand they not only play a disproportionate role in keeping the economy ticking over (via the money they spend and the people they employ) but also generate a staggering proportion of the country’s overall tax revenue.
In fact, the top 1 per cent of earners, who command salaries of £207,000 or more, currently pay almost 13 per cent of the total sum HMRC takes in income taxes, a proportion that has increased year by year as income tax thresholds have been frozen by successive governments.
The most fortunate 11,000, who each make more than £2million a year, paid as much to the Exchequer as the ten million lowest earners last year.
The problem is the Treasury only needs a handful of the very wealthiest residents to move abroad for a huge hole to be blown in its finances. And an increasing number, from every corner of the UK, are choosing to do just that.
Christian Angermayer, a German-born investor who used to live in the UK, is now in Switzerland
John Fredriksen, a Norwegian shipping magnate, closed his Chelsea office and moved to the United Arab Emirates, declaring that Britain had ‘gone to hell’
Slavica Ecclestone, formerly Radic, was married to F1 tycoon Bernie Ecclestone for nearly 25 years. She now lives in Monaco
Monaco has a population of around 38,000 and is famous for its expensive housing and F1 track
Among them is Lady Ballyedmond, a pharmaceutical heiress who was Northern Ireland’s richest inhabitant. She’s now living in Italy. Then there’s Malcolm Healey, a kitchens tycoon long regarded as Yorkshire’s wealthiest man. He’s gone to the US.
And Lakshmi Mittal, a former Labour donor who moved to Britain 30 years ago and was for eight years the country’s wealthiest man, announced his departure earlier this year, with his office telling reporters: ‘It’s sad. Our country got a lot out of having families like these here. So many have left.’
When it comes to billionaires, the numbers speak for themselves.
According to the Sunday Times Rich List, which came out in May, Britain now boasts a mere 157 of these lucky souls, down from 177 in 2022. A third of the citizens who appear in the top 350 in its charts are no longer resident in the country for tax purposes. And one in six of the people who were there two years ago have since vanished.
The sole foreign billionaire who joined last year was Warren Stephens, an American investment banker. But he only came to these shores because President Donald Trump appointed him the new US ambassador to the UK, remarking in an interview last August that ‘a lot’ of very wealthy people were quitting the UK.
‘In the US, the top 10 per cent pay most of the income tax, so why do you want to run them out?’ he asked.
HMRC’s records for the last financial year support that view. They reveal that 39.8 million Britons pay income tax, out of which a staggering 30 million, who earn under £30,000, pay it at a rate of just 12.5 per cent or less. Compare their lot with that of the aforementioned Chris Rokos.
The £330million he shelled out last year, from reported earnings of £477million, represented almost half as much as the £700million that the country’s bottom three million earners paid in income tax.
Lady Ballyedmond, a pharmaceutical heiress who was Northern Ireland’s richest inhabitant, is now living in Italy
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To replace the cash that will be lost, thanks to his departure to Greece, the Exchequer will now need to conjure up an additional 26,000 workers, on salaries of around £30,000.
The concern, therefore, is that our fiscal regime is now starting to cause serious economic harm, with Britain reaching the point where, as the Reaganite economist Arthur Laffer noted back in 1974, higher taxes serve to reduce, rather than increase, overall revenue. The only way to balance the books, when wealthy people leave, will be for the Government to raise taxes on the rest of us.
Labour can’t say it hasn’t been warned. In February, Mark Goddard, the UK chief executive of Swiss bank Lombard Odier, which manages £215billion, wrote to then-chancellor Rachel Reeves warning that fiscal policy was making the UK an ‘excruciating’ place to invest. His letter told how he’d recently hosted a dinner for eight entrepreneurs, at which six had said they were considering leaving the UK.
‘We are seeing a quiet but determined exodus,’ Mr Goddard said. ‘When these individuals leave, they don’t just take their bank balance. They take their expertise, their future tax contributions and their appetite to mentor and fund the next generation of British start-ups.’
Recent high-profile departures in the technology space include Herman Narula, the founder of Improbable, a London firm that makes infrastructure for the so-called ‘metaverse’, who moved to Dubai citing talk of Labour introducing an ‘exit tax’ on business leaders who depart.
‘I don’t particularly want to leave the UK but I might want to one day and I don’t want to be banned from that option,’ he said.
Not helping things is Labour’s decision in April last year to abolish the ‘non-domicile’ tax status, via which certain mostly foreign residents were only required to pay UK tax on assets they moved onshore (and avoided it on worldwide income and gains). This also made them liable for inheritance tax at up to 40 per cent.
‘In effect, it has made Britain not just an expensive place to live in but an expensive place to die in, too,’ is how one tax adviser puts it.
David Lesperance, a tax and immigration adviser who was interviewed by the Rich List, has blamed the move for driving his clients overseas.
Two years ago, he boasted 20 UK-based individuals on his books, each with a net worth of more than £370million. All of them have now relocated.
‘Everyone has inertia when it comes to making a move,’ he said. ‘It often takes a significant force to propel someone to go and in this case it was the removal of non-dom status. You can see why many came to the view, “I like London just not that much.”’
Ominously, he regards their departure as just the first wave.
‘The next is the homegrown British wealth creators who don’t want to be hit by higher capital gains tax, a possible exit tax or even a wealth tax after a big moment like selling their business.’
Among the most obvious beneficiaries are countries such as Dubai and Israel, where there is no such thing as inheritance tax (Mahdi al-Taji, the owner of the water brand Highland Spring, is now in the former while Teddy Sagi, Camden market owner, is in the latter).
The trend isn’t just affecting billionaires, either. Henley & Partners, a leading company in the field of so-called ‘citizenship planning’, estimated that 16,500 millionaires left the UK in 2025, taking around $91.8billion (£68billion) with them.
The two most popular destinations for UK departures in 2026 were Portugal, where the principal attraction is ‘quality of life’, and Thailand, which has a similar regime to the ‘non-dom’ system that the UK abolished.
As Britain has ratcheted up its taxes, several enterprising European countries have spotted an opportunity. Italy, which requires residents to pay a flat tax of 300,000 euros on foreign sourced income, was last year’s preferred destination for disgruntled City figures, while Athens, where Rokos is heading, is currently the modish choice.
The Greek government has played a particularly canny game. Having been driven close to bankruptcy in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, when the country was initially forced to make drastic spending cuts to balance its books, it decided in 2020 to experiment with a 100,000 euro flat tax for foreigners.
A host of high-profile figures, including tennis star Novak Djokovic, moved to Athens, recently followed by a succession of hedge funds, including Millennium Capital Management which has $92billion under management, and set up an office in Greece this summer, and now Rokos Capital Management is also setting up shop there.
‘Dubai isn’t for everyone. Lisbon is too small. Milan is boring and Geneva is very boring. But Athens, now that’s a great place to live,’ says one London-based hedgie. ‘It’s only three hours from London and it has a CEO-type PM running the country like a business. There’s lots of depth to the culture, decent schools, great nightlife. What’s not to like?’
The problem, he says, is that once high-earning people quit the UK, it’s very hard to tempt them back. ‘Once people have gone somewhere and settled, there’s quite a lot of friction in getting them to come back,’ he says. ‘Andy Burnham can’t just turn around and go, “I’ve cut 5p off the top rate of income tax.” Or, “I’ve reduced CGT to 20 per cent.” When in Greece they are paying zero.
‘There’s also a leap of trust. Do you remember the first time you paid for something online with a credit card? Terrifying.
‘But once you did it, you realised it’s incredibly easy. Same with leaving London. When no one else has done it, it’s terrifying. Now it’s tempting. Very tempting, indeed.’
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