The Icelandic-born billionaire behind Nasdaq-listed biosimilars group Alvotech has become the latest international entrepreneur to warn that Britain’s tax direction is making the country uninvestable for mobile capital.

Róbert Wessman, the 56-year-old founder and chief executive of Alvotech and the owner of fast-growing French wine venture Maison Wessman, has told Business Matters in an interview at his Pall Mall club that the “whole package” of inheritance tax, capital gains tax and political instability is steadily pushing him towards the exit.

“It’s just the whole scheme has changed so much, which makes it very difficult, not only for foreigners to come here, but for wealthy people, who live here, are born here, and have always been here, to basically stay here,” Wessman said.

His warning lands as Britain digests the most striking edition of the Sunday Times Rich List in living memory, with one in six members of the 2026 list dropping out and the UK billionaire population falling to 157, twenty fewer than four years ago. Almost a third of the 350 British nationals on the main list no longer live on the British mainland.

‘Not a pro-business country anymore’

Wessman, who moved his family from Reykjavík to London in 2019 and opened a Hammersmith head office for his Aztiq investment vehicle two years later, said he no longer regarded the UK as a pro-business destination.

“At the same time, the stability is not really there. You had Brexit, it was a big issue for the industry, for the country, for the business, and then all the tax legislation now,” he said.

He spoke before the former health secretary Wes Streeting, who has launched a Labour leadership bid against Sir Keir Starmer, pledged what he called a “wealth tax that works”, centred on aligning capital gains rates with income tax. The proposal has been costed by allies at around £12 billion a year.

Asked about politicians’ appetite for taxing the wealthy, Wessman was unsparing: “We see this in many countries, that this can be the flavour of the day for politicians. But in the end, countries are built on employment, on jobs, high-paying jobs preferably, value creation. And hopefully you can then benefit from having the business in the country.”

His comments echo a growing chorus of warnings from international business owners. Henley & Partners has forecast that Britain will lose more millionaires than any country bar China this year, and a BDO survey recently found that two-thirds of the UK’s ultra-wealthy have considered relocating, citing policy inconsistency as a bigger problem than the headline tax rate itself.

From Icelandic generics to Nasdaq biosimilars

Wessman has built, and lost, fortunes before. He turned Delta, an obscure Reykjavík generics business, into Actavis, one of the world’s largest generic drugmakers, before losing an estimated €250 million in the 2008 Icelandic banking crash. That episode triggered a long and bitter legal battle with fellow Icelandic financier Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson over a highly leveraged pre-crisis buyout.

Undeterred, he has founded seven companies over three decades and is now ploughing capital into Alvotech, the Nasdaq, Icelandic and Swedish-listed group he is positioning as a global challenger in biosimilars.

The group has invested $2 billion since 2013, employs 1,500 staff, most of them in Reykjavík, and is being built deliberately as the “fourth leg” of the Icelandic economy alongside fishing, tourism and manufacturing. Alvotech has five approved biosimilars on the market, generated revenues of $593 million last year and is guiding to $650 million to $700 million in 2026. It is currently valued at around $1 billion in New York.

Wessman holds a 35 per cent stake through Luxembourg-domiciled Aztiq, plus a further 30 per cent through a partnership with Temasek, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, and private equity house CVC Capital Partners.

Biosimilars, close copies of complex biological drugs whose patents have expired, are notoriously expensive to develop and frequently trigger patent litigation, as Alvotech experienced in its dispute with AbbVie over the autoimmune blockbuster Humira. Wessman argues they are essential if state-funded healthcare systems are to avoid being “sunk” by the cost of modern biologics.

A château, two million bottles and Norah Jones

His diversification into wine began as a hobby with the 2004 acquisition of the 12th-century Château de Saint-Cernin, near Bergerac, and the release of an inaugural vintage in 2016. Maison Wessman is now on track to produce around two million bottles this year, supplying French retailer Intermarché and backed by the American jazz singer Norah Jones, whom Wessman met through a mutual contact after Enrique Iglesias played at his wedding.

‘We are leaving with a lot of capital, a lot of jobs’

Wessman, who is not a non-dom, said he moved to London “against the stream when Brexit was happening” because of the capital’s practical access to his businesses across Asia, the United States and central and eastern Europe. His Russian-born wife and six children are settled in “world-class” London schools.

“London is the most amazing city to live in. It has amazing education. It has everything to offer. It has amazing history,” he said.

But he believes Brexit was a strategic error for what he called “a very proud nation”, leaving Britain less integrated into European supply chains and badly diminished as a listing venue.

“Since Brexit, many of the big banks don’t ever bring up the UK as an alternative, as a listing venue anymore,” he said.

That listings problem now compounds with sweeping fiscal reform. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has scrapped the centuries-old non-dom regime and replaced it with a new four-year residence-based test for foreign income and gains, plus a residence-based inheritance tax that captures worldwide assets for those resident in the UK for ten of the previous twenty years. Capital gains tax rates were also lifted in the October 2024 Budget to 18 per cent and 24 per cent.

The early evidence is unflattering: around 1,800 non-doms have already quit the UK in the wake of the reforms, raising serious questions about whether the package will deliver the £34 billion Treasury revenue target.

Wessman said he had recently looked at properties in Milan and made clear he was reluctantly being pushed in that direction.

“I don’t regret paying high taxes in the UK,” he said, “but it has to be within certain certainties and scope. I’m sitting with my tax adviser getting an update two to three times a year of what might be coming next, and it’s all over the place. This is not encouraging anyone to live here.”

“I really love to live here. But overall, I think where you have mobile capital, which can be based anywhere, it will push more people out.

“We are leaving with a lot of capital. We are leaving with a lot of jobs. We are leaving without even thinking that the UK would be a good idea to build any manufacturing or R&D or anything. That’s the sad part of it.”

For a government banking on wealthy non-doms to part-fund public services, that is a warning shot from precisely the sort of internationally mobile, job-creating, IP-rich founder the Treasury insists it still wants to attract.

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Ofgem will on Wednesday reveal the level of the annual energy price cap for July to September

Households will this week find out how much energy bills are set to increase by from July when the price cap is updated as forecasts point to a rise of more than £200 and a painful winter of sky-high bills ahead due to the Iran war.

Regulator Ofgem will on Wednesday reveal the level of the annual energy price cap for July to September for a typical dual fuel household across England, Scotland and Wales.

Analysts Cornwall Insight predicted last week the cap will rise by £209 a year to £1,850 from July 1 – an increase of 13% on April’s £1,641 annual cap.

It sets a maximum price per unit of gas and electricity used, meaning households only pay for the amount of energy they use.

This means households will be largely shielded over the warm summer months, but concerns are growing over a painful hit when the cap is reviewed in October and energy demand rises as temperatures drop.

Cornwall Insight’s forecasts suggest the cap in October will be at a similar level to July, even if the Middle East conflict were to end soon, due to the physical damage to infrastructure and lingering effect of disrupted supply.

Calls have been mounting for the Government to set out action to support the most vulnerable, but Chancellor Rachel Reeves stopped short of any immediate energy measures in her cost-of-living plan.

She told MPs last week: “We stand ready to act if market conditions worsen significantly later this year and I have been leading cross-Government contingency work on design of potential future targeted and temporary support for businesses.”

Energy costs have been sent rocketing higher by Iran’s move to block the crucial Strait of Hormuz shipping route, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas is carried.

But households have yet to feel the impact, as the price cap is reviewed on a quarterly basis, and April saw a 7% drop thanks to Government measures to reduce bills.

This included moving 75% of the cost of the UK’s renewables obligation from household bills on to general taxation, and scrapping the energy company obligation scheme.

Campaigners have warned over an “extremely difficult winter” ahead for the most vulnerable without extra support on bills.

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: “Households need reassurance and support, not a summer of suspense. That means the Government must act before winter to spell out what support will be available.”

The Government has insisted that “tackling the affordability crisis is our number one priority”.

Its package of support measures so far includes a cut in the rate of VAT on attraction tickets over the summer holidays, free bus travel for children in England during August, extending the 5p-per-litre fuel duty reduction and lowering import tariffs on more than 100 types of food products.

But the lack of further action on energy bills is seen as holding back spending by cash-strapped consumers.

Economist Martin Beck, at WPI Strategy, said recent official figures showing lower retail sales in April was already a sign that “energy pressures are biting”.

“Higher petrol prices, the prospect of an increase in household energy bills in July and weakening consumer sentiment all point to a more cautious spending backdrop,” he said.

Global equity markets remain firm, supported by strong momentum in US futures, which have been hovering near record highs. However, market participants are increasingly cautious about the narrow breadth of the rally, which is being powered by a limited set of large-cap stocks rather than a broad-based participation across sectors.

Speaking to ET Now, Anurag Singh, Managing Partner, Ansid Capital noted that while headline indices such as the S&P 500 are scaling new highs and levels around 7400–7500 appear impressive, the underlying structure of the market tells a more complex story. He pointed out that the current rally is unusually concentrated, with a small group of mega-cap stocks dominating overall performance. He said, “Everybody sees 7400–7500 on the S&P and all-time highs, which is great. But the market is extremely concentrated.”

He further highlighted that this level of concentration in top stocks is historically unusual and raises structural concerns for investors looking beyond index levels. According to him, sector participation remains uneven, with weakness visible in areas such as healthcare and discretionary consumption. He remarked, “In no time in American market history has the market been as concentrated in the top 10 stocks.” He also added that broader segments of the market have been under pressure, saying, “Healthcare is weak, discretionary is weak. Even retail like Walmart has corrected.”

Singh described the current environment as a “tale of two markets,” where index performance is masking underlying divergence. He cautioned that such heavy reliance on a handful of stocks is not a sustainable portfolio construct over the long term. “Beyond a point, 40–50% in 10 stocks is not a portfolio,” he said. Despite these concerns, he remained cautiously optimistic on overall index levels, suggesting that earnings support justifies current valuations. “S&P at 7200–7300 looks fair based on earnings,” he noted, while adding that the market still lacks a clear, broad-based headwind.

On global fund flows, Singh observed that capital allocation across markets has become increasingly momentum-driven rather than valuation-driven. He said investors are largely chasing performance, with flows rotating into markets like Korea, Taiwan, and the US, which are currently showing strong momentum. In contrast, he noted that India has temporarily lost favour in global allocation trends. “Nobody knows where flows go. Everyone is chasing momentum,” he said. He also pointed out a shift in domestic investor behaviour, where large-cap stocks are seeing relatively lower participation compared to mid- and small-cap segments, stating, “Nobody is buying largecaps; everyone is in mid and smallcaps.”

He added that liquidity continues to play a major role in supporting markets globally, with momentum itself attracting further flows. According to him, “Momentum is in Korea, Taiwan, US. India is out of flavour for now.” Singh also remarked on the muted urgency around foreign institutional investor flows in India, suggesting that policy attention has not been strong enough in recent months.
On the inflation outlook, Singh drew a clear distinction between India and developed economies. He said India’s inflation is largely supply-driven, primarily influenced by oil and import-related pressures, rather than domestic demand conditions. “India does not have demand inflation, mostly supply-led due to oil,” he said, adding that the situation remains relatively manageable.For the United States, he argued that inflation risks are less severe than in previous cycles, supported by stable wage growth and structural changes in the labour market. He noted that wage pressures remain contained, stating, “Wages are below 3.8%, so pressure is limited.” He also highlighted the role of artificial intelligence and labour participation trends in keeping inflation subdued, saying, “AI and labour participation are keeping wage inflation contained.”

He further observed that central banks are now focusing more on core inflation, which remains relatively stable, reducing the urgency for aggressive policy tightening. Concluding his view, Singh said that while regions like the UK and Europe continue to struggle with persistent inflation challenges, India remains largely stable. “India is fine. UK and Europe still have inflation problems,” he said.

Overall, the commentary suggests that while global equity markets continue to benefit from strong momentum, especially in the United States, the underlying structure remains uneven, with concentration risks, shifting global flows, and divergent inflation trends shaping the broader market narrative.

Shares of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) gained as much as 4% to hit an intraday high of Rs 813 on the BSE on Monday, extending gains for a second consecutive session and rising 6% over the period.

Last week, the state-owned company announced a 1:1 bonus issue along with its Q4 results. Under the bonus issue, the insurer will allot one fully paid-up equity share of Rs 10 each for every existing fully paid-up equity share of Rs 10 each held by shareholders. The company has fixed May 29 as the record date to determine shareholder eligibility for the bonus issue.

LIC reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 23,467 crore for the fourth quarter of FY26, up 23% year-on-year (YoY) from Rs 19,039 crore posted in the corresponding quarter last year. Net premium income for the quarter rose 12% to Rs 1.65 lakh crore, compared with Rs 1.48 lakh crore in the year-ago period.

For the full financial year ended March 31, 2026, the insurer reported over 5% growth in assets under management to Rs 57.29 lakh crore, while net profit increased more than 19% YoY to Rs 57,419 crore.

It also announced a 1:1 bonus. Under the bonus issue, the insurer will allot one fully paid-up equity share of Rs 10 each for every existing fully paid-up equity share of Rs 10 each held by shareholders. The company has fixed May 29 as the record date to determine shareholder eligibility for the bonus issue.

LIC shares: Buy, sell or hold?

Citigroup maintained a ‘Buy’ rating on LIC with a target price of Rs 1,475 per share, an upside potential of more than 81% from the stock’s previous closing price of Rs 813 on the BSE. According to Citi, the improvement in numbers was driven by a better non-par product mix and favourable yield curve benefits in the fast-growing non-par business. The brokerage also noted that management highlighted initiatives to improve persistency, boost product innovation, enhance agent productivity, expand the agent network, and increase contributions from non-agency distribution channels.
Citi added that LIC’s valuation remains attractive, with projected FY27 core embedded value, excluding mark-to-market embedded value, exceeding the company’s current market capitalisation. However, it said uncertainty around the promoter-holding structure continues to weigh on the stock.Bernstein retained a ‘Market Perform’ rating with a target price of Rs 900 per share, implying an upside potential of over 11%. The brokerage said LIC reported healthy revenue growth during the quarter, with new sales rising 22% in Q4 and 18% year-on-year in FY26, led by strong growth in non-par products. Bernstein added that margins continued to improve through FY26 due to a favourable shift in product mix and supportive yield curve movements.
The brokerage also said LIC’s management expects margins to gradually converge with private-sector peers over the medium term, although the transition is likely to take time.

JM Financial maintained its ‘Buy’ rating on LIC and raised its target price to Rs 960 per share, implying an upside of 18%. The brokerage said it had upgraded the stock after Q1FY26, expecting a rerating in the second half of the year.

According to JM Financial, LIC’s diversifying product mix and improving margins strengthen growth resilience. It noted that the stock remained range-bound as weak equity markets kept embedded value below September 2024 levels.

However, the brokerage expects embedded value growth to improve as macroeconomic conditions stabilise, supported by improving business growth, an unwind of over 9%, and VNB at 2% of opening embedded value. JM Financial also upgraded its earnings estimates for the insurer.

The stock has gained 2% over the past month but is down 7% over the last six months. The company’s market capitalisation currently stands at Rs 5.27 lakh crore.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

In a claim that will resonate with thousands of school-leavers wading through a torrent of rejection emails this summer, the skills minister has declared that securing a coveted apprenticeship in Britain has become harder than winning a place at Oxford or Cambridge.

Baroness Smith of Malvern, the former Commons home secretary turned Strictly Come Dancing contestant who now holds the skills brief at the Department for Education, told The Sun on Sunday that young people the length of the country were “queuing up” for apprenticeships, with employers spoilt for choice. Her remarks landed as Whitehall figures laid bare a deepening youth labour crunch: roughly one million people aged between 16 and 24 are now classed as Neets – not in education, employment or training.

The numbers behind the soundbite

The arithmetic appears, on the face of it, to back her up. Cambridge received 22,820 applications for the 2025 intake and offered 3,716 places, an acceptance rate of 16.3 per cent. Oxford was tighter still, admitting just 3,245 of 23,061 hopefuls, 14.1 per cent. By comparison, several blue-chip apprenticeship schemes, especially degree-level engineering programmes, routinely attract north of 150 applications per slot, eclipsing the odds at the dreaming spires.

According to the latest Department for Education apprenticeship statistics, there were 353,500 apprenticeship starts in England in the 2024-25 academic year and 761,500 people participating overall, with higher-level apprenticeships up more than 15 per cent year-on-year. Business, administration and law remains the largest single subject area.

To unblock the bottleneck, Lady Smith pledged £600 million of new funding to bankroll 60,000 additional apprentices, part of a broader push to plug skills gaps in construction, engineering and digital roles. “It can sometimes be easier getting into Oxford or Cambridge than it can be getting an apprenticeship,” she said, adding: “Sometimes people say, ‘Young people don’t want to work in the construction industry’, but they really do… they are queuing up.”

Why employers are hesitating

The pledge nonetheless lands awkwardly for the small and medium-sized businesses that have historically done the heavy lifting on apprentice intake. Industry data suggest just one in five construction SMEs is planning to take on an apprentice this year, and employers’ groups argue that the Chancellor’s autumn measures, chiefly the rise in employer National Insurance contributions from 13.8 to 15 per cent in Rachel Reeves’s first Budget, have left many smaller firms re-running the numbers on every new hire.

The minimum wage settlement that took effect in April only sharpened the squeeze. The apprentice rate climbed 6 per cent to £8 an hour; the 18-to-20 band rose 8.5 per cent to £10.85; and the National Living Wage for over-21s reached £12.71. As Business Matters has previously reported, the combined effect has been to push employer costs for low-paid staff up by more than £2,100 per employee, a sum that, for owner-managers in hospitality, retail and care, has made hiring under-25s, in the words of one trade body, “unaffordable” without external support.

A political squeeze tightens

The minister’s timing reflects a Treasury under mounting pressure to demonstrate that ministers can convert announcement into appointment. The latest Office for National Statistics NEET bulletin put the share of 16-to-24-year-olds out of work and study at 12.8 per cent, equivalent to 957,000 young people, with the next release due at the end of May.

Industry watchers will be looking for evidence that the policy mix is starting to shift the dial. With youth unemployment hovering near an 11-year high and employers warning that wage and tax bills are leaving little headroom to expand junior intake, the £600 million pledge will need to translate into hard cash on the ground, not merely a press notice, if Westminster is to ease the bottleneck that, on the minister’s own admission, is leaving Britain’s school-leavers fighting harder for an apprenticeship than for a place at the country’s most selective universities.

For SMEs, the calculation is unchanged: the talent is willing, and arguably abundant. The question is whether the policy framework finally makes saying yes affordable.

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