Friday 15 May 2026 7:00 am | Updated: Thursday 14 May 2026 9:32 pm
The Sunday Times Rich List has revealed a significant exodus of ultra-wealthy individuals from Britain, with its compiler warning that the trend underscores the scale of the country's wealth drain. For the first time, Revolut chief executive Nik Storonsky and quantitative trading luminary Alex Gerko have entered the top 10 of the annual ranking, but the list was dominated by news that as many as one in six of the individuals and families featured in 2024 did not appear this year.
Robert Watts, the compiler of the list, explained that many foreign billionaires who had been living in the UK have dropped out because they have moved away to lower-tax jurisdictions. Sanjay and Dheeraj Hinduja, the British-Indian family behind the Mumbai-based conglomerate, retained the top spot with a combined fortune of £38 billion. The rest of the top three remained unchanged, with property magnates David and Simon Reuben and Leonard Blavatnik both holding fortunes exceeding £25 billion.
James Dyson was the biggest faller this year, as his firm was heavily impacted by Donald Trump's tariffs, with his net wealth nearly halving from £20 billion to £12 billion, dropping him from fourth to 13th place. City figures also featured prominently: Storonsky broke into the top 10 after Revolut secured a UK banking licence and achieved a $75 billion valuation, while Gerko ranked eighth with a fortune over £16 billion. Both founders were born in Russia but renounced their citizenship after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
However, the report was overshadowed by the scale of the exodus. Over the first two decades of the 21st century, the rich list's wealth grew nearly 600 percent, but growth has stagnated in recent years, with the number of billionaires falling. The number of sterling-denominated billionaires in the UK peaked at 177 in 2022 but dropped to 157 in 2025, just one more than the previous year. Watts also highlighted a sharp rise in British nationals now residing in Dubai, Switzerland, and Monaco, warning that these twin exoduses pose a worrying development for Britain's economy and public finances.
He questioned whether more wealthy individuals would now set up or grow their ventures overseas, potentially creating fewer jobs in the UK, and how much tax Rachel Reeves' Treasury could extract from those who have left. The government has been accused of driving super-rich residents away after introducing a slew of taxes targeting ultra-high net worth individuals, including the abolition of the non-dom regime, VAT on private school fees, higher capital gains tax, and tighter inheritance tax rules. In 2025, a mansion tax on properties above £2 million was added.
The abolition of the non-dom regime has forced several high-net-worth Brits to leave, including former Goldman Sachs International chief Richard Gnodde and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal. Only one billionaire moved to the UK in the past year: US ambassador Warren Stephens.
