
Try our newest merchandise
Introduction: UK billionaires complete falls after market turmoil and non-dom tax clampdown
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling protection of enterprise, the monetary markets and the world economic system.
The variety of British billionaires has fallen, because the super-rich are hit by inventory market turbulence and the tip of tax breaks for non-doms.
The Sunday Occasions’s annual totting-up of Britain’s richest folks, simply printed exhibits that the variety of billionaires slid to 156 this 12 months from 165 in 2024. That’s the sharpest decline within the Wealthy Record’s 37-year-history.
The Sunday Occasions reviews that “falling fortunes” have led many to drop off the listing, whereas others are not eligible, having “fled Britain after Labour’s non-dom crackdown”.
Robert Watts, compiler of the Wealthy Record, says:
“Our billionaire rely is down and the mixed wealth of those that characteristic in our analysis is falling.
“We’re additionally discovering fewer of the world’s tremendous wealthy are coming to reside within the UK.”
In March 2024, then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt introduced plans to axe the UK’s tax breaks for non-doms, which allowed overseas nationals who reside within the UK to keep away from paying UK tax on their abroad earnings and positive factors. One London-based billionaire non-dom left the UK for good on the day of Hunt’s announcement, a tax advisor revealed.
Rachel Reeves tightened the coverage in her first funds, earlier than then softening the adjustments in an try and woo the wealthy.
The Sunday Occasions has calculated that the mixed wealth of the 350 entries on the Wealthy Record has dropped by 3% during the last 12 months, to £772.8bn, the third consecutive drop in collective worth.
The entry stage flatlines at £350m.
For the fourth successive 12 months, the listing is topped by Indian-born industrialist Gopi Hinduja, 85, and household with a fortune of £35.3bn, down from £37.1bn in 2024 as a result of drop within the worth of their inventory market-listed corporations. General, the Hinduja’s corporations function in automotive, oil and speciality chemical substances, banking and finance, IT, cybersecurity, healthcare, buying and selling, infrastructure mission improvement, media and leisure, energy, and actual property.
David and Simon Reuben and household have risen to second place, with £26.8bn (up from £25bn final 12 months) overtaking Sir Leonard Blavatnik, whose wealth has dropped to £25.725bn (from £29.2bn) resulting from a drop in his stake in Warner Music Group,
There are some eye-catching fallers on the listing too, together with businessman Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He’s dropped from 4th to seventh, after his wealth declined to £17bn from £23,5bn in 2024.
Britain’s billionaires can have gained wealth in the previous few weeks as international inventory markets recovered from their plunge in early April, when Donald Trump launched his international commerce conflict.
The agenda
-
9.30am BST: Hong Kong GDP report for Q1 2025
-
10am BST: Eurozone commerce stability report for March
-
1.30pm BST: US constructing permits and housing begins knowledge for April
-
3pm BST: College of Michigan survey of US client sentiment for Might (flash estimate)
Key occasions
BrewDog founder James Watt and his spouse, Georgia Toffolo, value £435m
Brewdog cofounder James Watt and actuality TV star Georgia Toffolo are new entries on the Wealthy Record this 12 months, following their marriage.
Watt, who created “punk” brewer BrewDog, and Toffolo, who appeared on “Made in Chelsea” and “I’m a Celeb… Get Me Out of Right here!” and now runs a talent-management company and a pet food enterprise, have a mixed wealth of £425m.
They married in March, regardless of Watt’s considerations that he would possibly miss out on tax reduction for investing in Toffolo’s pet food operation.
Toffolo advised the Sunday Occasions that the pair squeezed the honeymoon into two days between work commitments, explaining:
I suppose I’ve at all times had a specific kind: highly effective, profitable males. As a result of I’m so formidable myself, I feel I’d be unbearable for somebody who wasn’t on the prime of their sport themselves.
And watching James’s devotion to work, to creating new issues, is wonderful. We speak about work always. After we sit all the way down to supper we’ll discuss in regards to the intricacies of a board assembly he’s simply had. I do know that wouldn’t be for everybody, however I discover it invigorating.
🔹BrewDog founder James Watt and his spouse, Georgia Toffolo, make the listing with an estimated wealth of £425 million https://t.co/aS1s3wQrrs
— The Occasions and The Sunday Occasions (@thetimes) Might 16, 2025
The household homeowners of Bet365 swelled their estimated wealth by virtually £2bn final 12 months, as they weigh up a possible sale of their playing empire.
Denise, John and Peter Coates are actually value £9.44bn, right this moment’s Wealthy Record estimates, up £1.978bn during the last 12 months, resulting from their possession of Bet365.
That worth might quickly be crystallised; earlier this month, the Guardian reported that the Coates household are weighing up a sale that would worth the enterprise – based in a Portakabin in a Stoke automotive park- at £9bn.
Pop star Dua Lipa is the youngest particular person to characteristic on this 12 months’s Sunday Occasions 40 Below 40 Wealthy Record.
Dance The Night time singer Lipa, 29, who has received a number of Brit Awards and three Grammys, is thirty fourth on the listing, with an estimated wealth of £115m.
In 2024 she launched her third studio album, Radical Optimism. She additionally headlined Glastonbury Competition’s Friday night slot final 12 months, in a set dubbed “an unequivocal success” by our personal Alexis Petridis.
Commodity big Glencore’s former head of oil, Alex Beard, has misplaced his billionaire standing resulting from inventory market turbulence.
Beard, a extremely profitable commodity dealer, is now value £991m in keeping with the 2025 Wealthy Record, a drop of £224m.
Glencore’s shares have virtually halved during the last 12 months, as commodity costs have been hit by fears {that a} international commerce conflict would set off recession.
In August 2024, Beard was charged with bribery offences referring to the Swiss commodity dealer’s operations in Africa. He’s set to face trial in a London court docket in 2027 having indicated he’ll plead not responsible.
Excessive Pay Centre: We should tax the super-rich higher
Luke Hildyard, Govt Director of the Excessive Pay Centre, says right this moment’s Wealthy Record highlights the connection between the surplus wealth of “Britain’s billionaire class” and the nation’s low pay and poor public providers.
Hildyard explains:
“The wealthy listing is a helpful annual reminder of the inefficiency of the UK economic system. It exhibits a small fall within the worth of oligarch belongings this 12 months, however over an extended interval it illustrates how a tiny handful of very wealthy folks have captured an rising share of the nation’s wealth.
If the super-rich and the businesses they personal have been taxed extra successfully and paid the people who work for them a greater wage, residing requirements in Britain can be a lot increased. In the meantime the wealthy listing entrants would nonetheless be extraordinarily wealthy by any affordable particular person’s definition and nicely rewarded for no matter success they’ve achieved.
It’s naive to faux that taxing or limiting billionaire wealth can be straightforward, however equally such excessive focus of earnings and wealth could be very clearly not wise or environment friendly and policymakers ought to absolutely be much more energetic in attempting to do one thing about it.”
King Charles’s wealth ‘rises to £640m’
King Charles’s wealth has reportedly soared during the last 12 months to £640m, matching former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his spouse Akshata Murty, who’ve moved in the other way.
Right now’s Wealthy Record exhibits that the King’s private wealth has jumped by £30m to £640m within the final 12 months. That lifts him to joint 238th within the listing of the UK’s 350 wealthiest folks and households, up 20 locations from 258th in 2024.
The Sunday Occasions concedes that the magnitude of the King’s wealth divides opinion, as belongings – such because the £15.5bn Crown Property – are owned “in the precise of the Crown”, and will not be the King’s non-public property.
However as they clarify, Charles constructed up his wealth through the years by saving the income he obtained from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall – each now handed onto his son William.
Charles additionally inherited a big funding portfolio from Queen Elizabeth, which the Wealthy Record says is value about £125m, in addition to precious belongings reminiscent of Sandringham and Balmoral.
However his wealth exceeds £640m, by some measures. Again in 2023, the Guardian reported that King Charles’s non-public fortune was estimated at £1.8bn.
At £640m, the King is now tied with Sunak and Murty, whose wealth has slipped to £640m from £651m, That’s resulting from a drop within the worth of Murty’s stake in Infosys – the tech firm based by her father, which was hit by worries over US tariffs.
Introduction: UK billionaires complete falls after market turmoil and non-dom tax clampdown
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling protection of enterprise, the monetary markets and the world economic system.
The variety of British billionaires has fallen, because the super-rich are hit by inventory market turbulence and the tip of tax breaks for non-doms.
The Sunday Occasions’s annual totting-up of Britain’s richest folks, simply printed exhibits that the variety of billionaires slid to 156 this 12 months from 165 in 2024. That’s the sharpest decline within the Wealthy Record’s 37-year-history.
The Sunday Occasions reviews that “falling fortunes” have led many to drop off the listing, whereas others are not eligible, having “fled Britain after Labour’s non-dom crackdown”.
Robert Watts, compiler of the Wealthy Record, says:
“Our billionaire rely is down and the mixed wealth of those that characteristic in our analysis is falling.
“We’re additionally discovering fewer of the world’s tremendous wealthy are coming to reside within the UK.”
In March 2024, then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt introduced plans to axe the UK’s tax breaks for non-doms, which allowed overseas nationals who reside within the UK to keep away from paying UK tax on their abroad earnings and positive factors. One London-based billionaire non-dom left the UK for good on the day of Hunt’s announcement, a tax advisor revealed.
Rachel Reeves tightened the coverage in her first funds, earlier than then softening the adjustments in an try and woo the wealthy.
The Sunday Occasions has calculated that the mixed wealth of the 350 entries on the Wealthy Record has dropped by 3% during the last 12 months, to £772.8bn, the third consecutive drop in collective worth.
The entry stage flatlines at £350m.
For the fourth successive 12 months, the listing is topped by Indian-born industrialist Gopi Hinduja, 85, and household with a fortune of £35.3bn, down from £37.1bn in 2024 as a result of drop within the worth of their inventory market-listed corporations. General, the Hinduja’s corporations function in automotive, oil and speciality chemical substances, banking and finance, IT, cybersecurity, healthcare, buying and selling, infrastructure mission improvement, media and leisure, energy, and actual property.
David and Simon Reuben and household have risen to second place, with £26.8bn (up from £25bn final 12 months) overtaking Sir Leonard Blavatnik, whose wealth has dropped to £25.725bn (from £29.2bn) resulting from a drop in his stake in Warner Music Group,
There are some eye-catching fallers on the listing too, together with businessman Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He’s dropped from 4th to seventh, after his wealth declined to £17bn from £23,5bn in 2024.
Britain’s billionaires can have gained wealth in the previous few weeks as international inventory markets recovered from their plunge in early April, when Donald Trump launched his international commerce conflict.
The agenda
-
9.30am BST: Hong Kong GDP report for Q1 2025
-
10am BST: Eurozone commerce stability report for March
-
1.30pm BST: US constructing permits and housing begins knowledge for April
-
3pm BST: College of Michigan survey of US client sentiment for Might (flash estimate)