A record number of millionaires could leave the United Kingdom this year as political turmoil and the potential for higher taxes under a future Labour government reduce the appeal of what was once among the top destinations for the rich.
As many as 9,500 people with at least $1 million in liquid, investable assets, will leave the country, more than double the number that left in 2023, according to provisional estimates contained in a report Tuesday by migration advisers Henley & Partners.
“These figures reflect a steady accumulation of factors detracting from the UK’s appeal to high-net-worth individuals,” Hannah White, CEO of the Institute for Government, wrote in the report. “The hangover from Brexit continues to be felt, with the City of London no longer seen as the financial center of the world.”
The report is based on data on 150,000 high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) tracked by investment firm New World Wealth. The firm only counts people who stay in their new country more than half of the year, and focuses primarily on company founders, chairs, CEOs, presidents, directors and managing partners.
The continuing exodus from the UK — 16,500 millionaires left between 2017 and 2023 — is part of a global mass migration of the rich that appears to be accelerating. The Henley Private Wealth Migration report found that 128,000 millionaires are set to relocate this year, beating last year’s record by 8,000.
“As the world grapples with a perfect storm of geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty and social upheaval, millionaires are voting with their feet in record numbers,” Dominic Volek, head of private clients at Henley & Partners, said in a press release.
A record number of millionaires could leave the United Kingdom this year as political turmoil and the potential for higher taxes under a future Labour government reduce the appeal of what was once among the top destinations for the rich.
COULD leave
POTENTIAL for higher taxes
As many as 9,500 people with at least $1 million in liquid, investable assets, will leave the country, more than double the number that left in 2023, according to provisional estimates contained in a report Tuesday by migration advisers Henley & Partners.
according to PROVISIONAL ESTIMATES
I get that cnn is just barely reputable tier news source, but you can read the actual report instead of having to filter out the cnn ELI5. That report is here: The Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2024
They’re tracking these wealthy people:
“New World Wealth tracks the movements of over 150,000 high-net-worth individuals in its in-house database, with a special focus on those with over USD 30 million in listed company holdings. The database’s primary focus is on company founders (50%+ of the database) and individuals from high-value companies who hold the following positions: chairperson, CEO, president, director, and managing partner.”
… and can see the actions a person takes before leaving with Visa filings and other actions:
“Most migrating high-net-worth individuals do so via work visas, ancestry visas, and family visas or owing to having additional passports by birthright. New World Wealth estimates that currently around 25% opt for investment migration programs to secure residence rights or additional citizenships.”
I believe their estimates:
“It is important to note that the high-net-worth-individual migration figures in this report and dashboard focus only on people who have truly moved, namely, those who stay in their new country more than half of the year. Many wealthy individuals acquire residence rights for countries but never relocate to those countries. Such individuals are excluded from our figures, which are therefore on the conservative side.”
It looks like this is part of the management consultancy they do as a business. They likely base their projections on key indicators from prior years that prove out. So when they say they X number of leaving, I’m betting they’re pretty close. This report alone has 18 authors and contributors at that company.
So plenty of FUD from a firm that… Helps wealthy tax avoiders avoid tax. OK.
So plenty of FUD from a firm that…
I only skimmed 5 pages or so of the report but, I’m not seeing much FUD. It looks like analysis from primary and secondary sources. You can certainly disagree with their conclusions. I’m not versed enough in that industry to speak authoritatively on it.
Helps wealthy tax avoiders avoid tax. OK.
It absolutely can be used for that. Or more specifically, there are those that are already doing that and this can provide other the path to do the same.
I’m not versed enough in that industry to speak authoritatively on it.
In the tax avoidance industry? No, me neither.
I’m not sure why you lend such credence to stuff churned out by people with such obvious and clear self-interest in the assertions they’re making. “Grown-ups taking over running the country from incompetents and disaster capitalists spells trouble for the filthy rich who may well leave the country” is such a well-worn and nakedly self-serving line I don’t know why you take it so seriously. Like, their whole thing, literally everything they do is to reduce tax for the ultra wealthy. Of course they’re not going to be keen that the economy-crashing “reduce taxes at the top end” party are leaving government, they might have to work even harder than before to exploit a shrinking pool of loopholes. I lost my tiny violin, so I’m all out of sob-story music for them.
Oh good… There’s a list… Let’s make sure we get that list for the revolution
You got so much more to learn about how the real world works.
It feels like that education you’re suggesting may involve a cork bulletin board with documents and photographs tacked on it connected varying lengths of red yarn.
I aint never shy to talk shop on some tinfoil but no that’s not what we got here.
"Henley & Partners is the global leader in residence and citizenship by investment. Each year, hundreds of wealthy individuals and their advisors rely on our expertise and experience in this area. The firm’s highly qualified professionals work together as one team in over 55 offices worldwide.
The concept of residence and citizenship by investment was created by Henley & Partners in the 1990s. As globalization has expanded, residence and citizenship have become topics of significant interest among the increasing number of internationally mobile entrepreneurs and investors whom we proudly serve every day."
These clowns literally shill for the rich because that’s their clients… learn how to check your sources and their bias, dear.
learn how to check your sources and their bias, dear.
You’re telling me to check my sources? Before I got here, “the source” was a half-assed summary of a summary from CNN.com. I’m the one that found the original authors and the original report from the CNN article, honey.
These clowns literally shill for the rich because that’s their clients…
Of course they’re shills for the rich, everyone is that serves that market. You’ve made a total of 4 posts in this thread so far. Not a single one is offering an opinion on the topic. I have no idea what you agree or disagree with on the topic except 50% of your posts here are attacking people with ad homiem or vague references of superiority.
Any time you’d like to join the conversation on the topic with a post of substance, you’d be welcome. So far I’m seeing nothing from you.
Holy shit
It didn’t even occur to me that this might be anything other than a completely real story about a sensible reaction to the still unfolding and worsening consequences of the Tories absolutely goatfucking the economy of the entire country, on purpose and for literally no reason at all, in 2016.
But sure, must be that pesky political turmoil.
Came here to do the job so thank you for the service.
Gotta love when rich people get their way for long enough they turn the country into something they want to flee from. Every time.
Somalia is a libertarian paradise.
Not anymore, they’re doing the unthinkable and charging people taxes and trying to enforce laws lately.
G’Day from the mining colony.
OH NO!!!
Anyway, please make sure to tax the shit out of the ones living overseas, specially their realestate. Fuck all elitist shits.
Let them all move to Russia.
If only we could get ours to leave too. We are happy for you though.
Assuming they actually leave - cool. Less lobbying for 1% policies, and the UK can replace their potential investments by new pounds of public investment injected into the economy. I hear some infrastructure needs repairs and upgrades.
Is the author “Mark Thompson” the pen name for Sunak or Farage?
For bootlicker
I’m not exactly a millionaire but I’d be willing to leave the UK if it wasn’t such a hassle. It’s been quite a while since I’ve felt any national pride in the things we’re doing or our collective priorities.
The likelihood of having even more overseas parties with massive stakes in our economy, infrastructure, and housing with a somehow greater degree of detachment from their impact doesn’t sound great for anyone.
You really need to read the article IMO, OP only post a half cutout for some reason???
Now there’s a new risk on the horizon. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, which is leading Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives by a margin of about 20% in opinion polls,
That would probably mean Labour gets about 80% of the seats. I seriously doubt UK will be able to right itself under the current political system.
Because then labor will increase taxes to improve services, and people will not feel the improvement and think they get nothing, because it takes time to build what Conservatives have torn down.Labor is probably lucky if they get 2 terms. And they need to get things passed in the house of lords, which will undermine the Labor government. Then the people will forget how shitty Conservatives are, and vote them back in, because they don’t feel Labor is doing a good enough job with their money.
This will cause an absolute majority to Conservatives because of the idiotic first past the post system, and Conservatives will tear down everything Labor has built, either good or bad.
The first past the post system is a disease that undermines democracy to make it almost totally dysfunctional. We see the same in USA.
It’s an attempt to sacrifice democracy for efficiency, and the end result is that both are ruined.Now whether millionaires are fleeing or not IDK, but they may not be worth much for UK society any way. Millionaires use more public services and pay less, so it may in fact be good riddance, unless they actually contribute. But I do believe it may be a symptom of a society that doesn’t work as well as it used to, so those that have the means, choose other options.
They don’t need to increase taxes to do that. They can print as much pounds as needed to put all the available labor needed to improve services and infrastructure as fast as possible. Faster than if they had to tax the money first. I don’t know if they’ll do that though. :D
No they can’t, that creates hyper inflation and ruins the economy. If that was an option, why do you think not every government does that instead of taxes?
I believe this is false and it misunderstands how the system actually works but I don’t have the energy to go too much into it. Briefly:
Simply consider the case where you have removed X pounds of investment by having those pounds moved to another country. This is deflationary. Replace those X pounds with new pounds in the UK. This covers that deflation. An inflationary effect might occur in the country where the original pounds went to be spent. If the money is instead not spent and just stored in various unproductive assets, then there’s no effect in that country either.
Additionally, more money does not necessarily mean more inflation, let alone hyperinflation. Look up the velocity of money equation. There are a few more variables that interplay with the supply of money. In short, if you have the real resources needed in a part of the economy where you want higher production (production capacity, labor, metal, brick, oil, electricity, etc.) you can spend some amount of new money that will result in increased production without incurring inflation. This is standard economics, nothing controversial about it.
Not only it’s an option but governments have always spent new money as well as taxed existing. In fact they cannot tax before spending since they create the pounds in circulation. They cannot tax pounds from citizens who don’t have them. I know this isn’t what’s being promulgated by the conventional econ 101 wisdom, but if you think about it, it’s an obvious fact. There’s plenty of examples where governments have done public investment by spending new money into the economy which did not result in inflation, let alone hyperinflation.
I suggest watching or listening to one of Randall Wray’s intro to MMT lectures, especially the longer ones that go into the nature and origins of money. They’re eye-opening.
Every attempt at solving a state deficit by just printing more money has resulted in inflation. I don’t have to read anything, I have more than 30 years experience and interest in national economics that show a perfectly 100% predictable picture that this would be 100% certain to cause inflation.
You can’t make theory circumvent reality.
I didn’t say anything about solving a state deficit although that’s another interesting topic. Public debt being private savings and all that. What I said has been demonstrated plenty in reality. I’m aware that plenty of economics theorists and practitioners reject these ideas by assigning that something is reality while ignoring other parts of reality that don’t match. That said more and more come on board. I’ve had this conversation before. 🥹 All good.
while ignoring other parts of reality that don’t match
That part is true.
“printing” money happens very very often. The US constantly prints money AND increases it’s debt yet the dollar stays strong. You have to remember value of a currency is imaginary, it’s just a contract where we agree X is X and Y is Y.
While yes you can devalue a currency by printing money, you can also increase its value by strengthening the system it’s printed into. If we print money to build and improve, the UK becomes more desirable and therefore it’s currency more valuable despite it’s increased monetary supply.
It’s alot more complicated than Print more worth less. Hell I expected high inflation after COVID due to increased printing, and while inflation did happen, it was not for that reason, it was pure greed.
They could be leaving the UK because they are afraid that Labour might actually make them pay taxes, or because they are sick of living in a Brexit-damaged UK. You’ll never know.
