Cardiff-born tech investment billionaire Michael Moritz says that the UK is an increasingly hostile place for British Jews, and he’s applying for German citizenship
When asked to name the richest person from Wales, you might guess at personalities such as Sir Tom Jones, Dame Shirley Bassey, or Sir Anthony Hopkins. But in fact the country’s wealthiest billionaire is a former journalist you may not have heard of: Sir Michael Moritz.
A little over 40 years after writing a book about the Apple computer company, Michael is sitting on a fortune of around £4.5billion, made largely through savvy investments in Silicon Valley start-ups.
But unlike some other members of the super-rich club, he has no problem with sharing his wealth. When Donald Trump scrapped America’s “SNAP” food stamp program, Michael and his wife, who now have a home in San Francisco, pledged $9 million (£6.7m), with a matching payment from the city, to keep them funded.
Nevertheless, Michael says, he’s considering turning his back on both the US and the UK – not because he’s unwilling to pay tax, but because he’s increasingly afraid of the political climate.
He says that the political lurch to the populist right on both sides of the Atlantic has him worried.
Michael, whose father Ludwig brought the family to the UK after the rise of Hitler in his native Germany, told The Times that he has applied for a German passport to ensure his family’s safety. “I think Britain for Jews today is a very hostile place,” he says. “If you’re a kid living in north London, you don’t wear school uniform any more, so you’re not identified as a Jew.”
He added that despite the grim history for Jews in the country, Germany seemed like the right place to be: “I think it’s this sort of emotional connection that that’s where Jews are buried.”
Flexibility, and the option to move to a safer country at a moment’s notice, is the lesson he has taken from his family’s history. “I think the lesson I’ve learnt is that you can never have enough passports,” he said.
Michael takes a particularly bleak view of the Trump presidency. Through his many contacts throughout the tech industry he says he understands why so many leading Silicon Valley figures appear to have lined up behind Trump: “Most of these people who pose in pictures with Trump, they have his number.
“They realise what an absurd buffoon he is. But he’s running a protection racket and they’ve got to pay for protection. That’s what they’re doing.”
He adds that while a leader’s policies are important, “character comes first”. And when it comes to character, Trump falls very short of Michael’s standards. Discussing Elon Musk, who briefly spearheaded the ill-fated DOGE initiative to cut US government spending, he says: “”Poor Elon, I thought he didn’t understand quite who he was dealing with.”
Some other billionaires had an even more jaundiced view of Musk’s reckless cost-cutting. Speaking of the sudden halting of US aid to developing countries around the world, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told the New York Times: “The world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”
Michael has chosen to use his wealth to support a number of positive ventures, including a return to his journalistic roots with a new newspaper, The San Francisco Standard: “I didn’t know what was happening in my own city, the coverage was so bad,” he says.
“I was pretty curious about trying to see whether there is a self-sustaining model for local journalism,” michael added, “because I think local journalism is what makes local democracy work.” He stresses that while he supports the paper financially, he has no input on the day-to-day news agenda: “I deserve to have my knuckles rapped, go for it,” he told his editorial team.
