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Introduction: UK billionaires total falls after market turmoil and non-dom tax clampdown
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
The number of British billionaires has fallen, as the super-rich are hit by stock market turbulence and the end of tax breaks for non-doms.
The Sunday Times’s annual totting-up of Britain’s richest people, just published shows that the number of billionaires slid to 156 this year from 165 in 2024. That’s the sharpest decline in the Rich List’s 37-year-history.
The Sunday Times reports that “falling fortunes” have led many to drop off the list, while others are no longer eligible, having “fled Britain after Labour’s non-dom crackdown”.
Robert Watts, compiler of the Rich List, says:
“Our billionaire count is down and the combined wealth of those who feature in our research is falling.
“We are also finding fewer of the world’s super rich are coming to live in the UK.”
In March 2024, then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced plans to axe the UK’s tax breaks for non-doms, which allowed foreign nationals who live in the UK to avoid paying UK tax on their overseas income and gains. 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 policy in her first budget, before then softening the changes in an attempt to woo the rich.
The Sunday Times has calculated that the combined wealth of the 350 entries on the Rich List has dropped by 3% over the last year, to £772.8bn, the third consecutive drop in collective value.
The entry level flatlines at £350m.
For the fourth successive year, the list is topped by Indian-born industrialist Gopi Hinduja, 85, and family with a fortune of £35.3bn, down from £37.1bn in 2024 due to the drop in the value of their stock market-listed companies. Overall, the Hinduja’s companies operate in automotive, oil and speciality chemicals, banking and finance, IT, cybersecurity, healthcare, trading, infrastructure project development, media and entertainment, power, and real estate.
David and Simon Reuben and family have risen to second place, with £26.8bn (up from £25bn last year) overtaking Sir Leonard Blavatnik, whose wealth has dropped to £25.725bn (from £29.2bn) due to a drop in his stake in Warner Music Group,
There are some eye-catching fallers on the list too, including businessman Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He’s dropped from 4th to 7th, after his wealth declined to £17bn from £23,5bn in 2024.
Britain’s billionaires will have gained wealth in the last few weeks as global stock markets recovered from their plunge in early April, when Donald Trump launched his global trade war.
The agenda
-
9.30am BST: Hong Kong GDP report for Q1 2025
-
10am BST: Eurozone trade balance report for March
-
1.30pm BST: US building permits and housing starts data for April
-
3pm BST: University of Michigan survey of US consumer sentiment for May (flash estimate)
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Pop star Dua Lipa is the youngest person to feature on this year’s Sunday Times 40 Under 40 Rich List.
Dance The Night singer Lipa, 29, who has won several Brit Awards and three Grammys, is 34th on the list, with an estimated wealth of £115m.
In 2024 she released her third studio album, Radical Optimism. She also headlined Glastonbury Festival’s Friday evening slot last year, in a set dubbed “an unequivocal success” by our own Alexis Petridis.
Commodity giant Glencore’s former head of oil, Alex Beard, has lost his billionaire status due to stock market turbulence.
Beard, a highly successful commodity trader, is now worth £991m according to the 2025 Rich List, a drop of £224m.
Glencore’s shares have almost halved over the last year, as commodity prices were hit by fears that a global trade war would trigger recession.
In August 2024, Beard was charged with bribery offences relating to the Swiss commodity trader’s operations in Africa. He is set to stand trial in a London court in 2027 having indicated he will plead not guilty.
High Pay Centre: We must tax the super-rich better
Luke Hildyard, Executive Director of the High Pay Centre, says today’s Rich List highlights the connection between the excess wealth of “Britain’s billionaire class” and the country’s low pay and poor public services.
Hildyard explains:
“The rich list is a useful annual reminder of the inefficiency of the UK economy. It shows a small fall in the value of oligarch assets this year, but over a longer period it illustrates how a tiny handful of very rich people have captured an increasing share of the country’s wealth.
If the super-rich and the companies they own were taxed more effectively and paid the people that work for them a better wage, living standards in Britain would be much higher. Meanwhile the rich list entrants would still be extremely rich by any reasonable person’s definition and well rewarded for whatever success they have achieved.
It’s naive to pretend that taxing or limiting billionaire wealth would be easy, but equally such extreme concentration of income and wealth is very obviously not sensible or efficient and policymakers should surely be a lot more energetic in trying to do something about it.”
King Charles's wealth 'rises to £640m'
King Charles’s wealth has reportedly soared over the last year to £640m, matching former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty, who have moved in the opposite direction.
Today’s Rich List shows that the King’s personal wealth has jumped by £30m to £640m in the last year. That lifts him to joint 238th in the list of the UK’s 350 wealthiest people and families, up 20 places from 258th in 2024.
The Sunday Times concedes that the magnitude of the King’s wealth divides opinion, as assets – such as the £15.5bn Crown Estate – are owned “in the right of the Crown”, and are not the King’s private property.
But as they explain, Charles built up his wealth over the years by saving the profits he received from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall – both now passed onto his son William.
Charles also inherited a large investment portfolio from Queen Elizabeth, which the Rich List says is worth about £125m, as well as valuable assets such as Sandringham and Balmoral.
But his wealth exceeds £640m, by some measures. Back in 2023, the Guardian reported that King Charles’s private 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 due to a drop in the value of Murty’s stake in Infosys – the tech company founded by her father, which was hit by worries over US tariffs.
Introduction: UK billionaires total falls after market turmoil and non-dom tax clampdown
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
The number of British billionaires has fallen, as the super-rich are hit by stock market turbulence and the end of tax breaks for non-doms.
The Sunday Times’s annual totting-up of Britain’s richest people, just published shows that the number of billionaires slid to 156 this year from 165 in 2024. That’s the sharpest decline in the Rich List’s 37-year-history.
The Sunday Times reports that “falling fortunes” have led many to drop off the list, while others are no longer eligible, having “fled Britain after Labour’s non-dom crackdown”.
Robert Watts, compiler of the Rich List, says:
“Our billionaire count is down and the combined wealth of those who feature in our research is falling.
“We are also finding fewer of the world’s super rich are coming to live in the UK.”
In March 2024, then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced plans to axe the UK’s tax breaks for non-doms, which allowed foreign nationals who live in the UK to avoid paying UK tax on their overseas income and gains. 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 policy in her first budget, before then softening the changes in an attempt to woo the rich.
The Sunday Times has calculated that the combined wealth of the 350 entries on the Rich List has dropped by 3% over the last year, to £772.8bn, the third consecutive drop in collective value.
The entry level flatlines at £350m.
For the fourth successive year, the list is topped by Indian-born industrialist Gopi Hinduja, 85, and family with a fortune of £35.3bn, down from £37.1bn in 2024 due to the drop in the value of their stock market-listed companies. Overall, the Hinduja’s companies operate in automotive, oil and speciality chemicals, banking and finance, IT, cybersecurity, healthcare, trading, infrastructure project development, media and entertainment, power, and real estate.
David and Simon Reuben and family have risen to second place, with £26.8bn (up from £25bn last year) overtaking Sir Leonard Blavatnik, whose wealth has dropped to £25.725bn (from £29.2bn) due to a drop in his stake in Warner Music Group,
There are some eye-catching fallers on the list too, including businessman Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He’s dropped from 4th to 7th, after his wealth declined to £17bn from £23,5bn in 2024.
Britain’s billionaires will have gained wealth in the last few weeks as global stock markets recovered from their plunge in early April, when Donald Trump launched his global trade war.
The agenda
-
9.30am BST: Hong Kong GDP report for Q1 2025
-
10am BST: Eurozone trade balance report for March
-
1.30pm BST: US building permits and housing starts data for April
-
3pm BST: University of Michigan survey of US consumer sentiment for May (flash estimate)
