Britain’s Second Richest Man Quits UK for Monaco in Latest Super-Rich Tax Exodus

David Reuben, the 88-year-old property tycoon who shares second place on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List with his brother Simon, has left Britain for Monaco, becoming the latest and most prominent member of the country’s super-rich to relocate overseas. A spokesman for the brothers confirmed the move, according to The Sunday Times, which first reported his departure, and The Independent, which also confirmed it through the family office.

Reuben, whose combined family fortune with his brother Simon is estimated at almost £28 billion, moved over the summer from his home in Holland Park, west London, to the Mediterranean principality. The spokesman declined to comment further on the reasons behind the move, according to the reports.

The departure of a man who once topped the Rich List outright marks the symbolic high-water mark of a migration of wealth that has gathered pace since Labour came to power. Simon Reuben, 85, has lived in Monaco for around forty years, having first moved there on health grounds while he was being treated for cancer, according to The Sunday Times. The principality charges its residents no income tax, no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax.

The Reuben brothers are among Britain’s best-known self-made billionaires. Born in Mumbai, they made their first fortunes in metals before building a sprawling property and investment empire, with major London projects including Admiralty Arch and Cambridge House. Their family also holds an interest in Newcastle United through RB Sports & Media, which owns 15 per cent of the Premier League club.

A wealth exodus gathering pace

Reuben’s move follows a string of high-profile departures by billionaires and senior financiers since the Labour government took office. The steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal has moved his tax residence to Switzerland, the hedge fund billionaire Chris Rokos is reportedly relocating to Greece, and the financier Sir Peter Lampl, founder of the Sutton Trust education charity, has announced he is moving to the United States, according to The Independent and other reports.

The scale of the drift toward Monaco is striking. Even before David Reuben’s departure, about £77 billion — more than 10 per cent of the total wealth identified in this year’s Rich List — was controlled by UK citizens resident in the principality, according to The Sunday Times. That is more than the wealth held by Rich Listers in Switzerland, Dubai and the Channel Islands combined. Twenty-four of the 350 individuals and families named in this year’s Rich List now live in Monaco, including the chemicals tycoon Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and the Formula One driver Sir Lewis Hamilton. Recent British arrivals include the sports promoter Eddie Hearn and the property brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who became a Monaco tax resident in 2018, recently argued that Britain was “on the slide” and that high taxes were among the reasons wealthy people were leaving, according to The Independent.

The tax changes behind the debate

Lawyers and economists have linked the string of departures to major changes in Britain’s tax treatment of the wealthy introduced since 2024. The most significant was the abolition of the centuries-old “non-dom” regime: from 6 April 2025, the system under which wealthy individuals resident in Britain could pay UK tax only on money earned in this country was replaced with a residence-based regime, according to HM Treasury.

For many years the Reuben brothers were reported to be non-doms, a status that allowed wealthy residents to pay UK tax only on income generated in Britain. The central concern for many wealthy people, according to The Sunday Times, was that scrapping non-dom protections would expose their worldwide assets to UK inheritance tax. The government has also added VAT to private school fees and raised capital gains taxes since coming to power, and there are expectations that capital gains tax may be increased again in the budget on 28 October.

Under the replacement regime, UK residents are generally taxed on worldwide income and gains, although qualifying new residents can claim relief on eligible foreign income and gains during their first four years in Britain after at least ten consecutive years of non-UK residence, according to the rules set out by HM Treasury. A spokesman for the Reuben brothers declined to comment on whether the tax changes prompted David Reuben’s move, and there is no direct evidence that the reforms were the trigger.

The pressure has been political as well as economic. Last year dozens of Labour MPs asked the chancellor, John Healey, to introduce a wealth tax on assets worth more than £10 million, and debates over taxing the richest have become one of the defining dividing lines between the government and its opponents ahead of the autumn budget.

However, the picture is contested. The Centre for Policy Studies has argued that Britain’s overall tax take is roughly in line with the European average once social security contributions are properly accounted for, suggesting that the tax-burden argument for leaving may be overstated.

Analysis: Why It Matters

David Reuben is not just another rich man moving house. He is Britain’s second-richest person, a former holder of the Rich List’s top spot, and a man whose family empire sits at the very heart of London’s property market. His departure carries a symbolic weight that the Treasury will find hard to dismiss, whatever the economists say about aggregate tax statistics.

The symbolism matters because of what it signals about confidence. Tax policy is not only about rates; it is about expectations. When a billionaire who built his fortune in Britain, who is restoring two of London’s most famous landmarks, and who has spent decades embedded in the country’s commercial life decides to leave, it sends a message to the next generation of entrepreneurs about where the smart money believes Britain is heading. Perception, once set, is notoriously difficult to tax back.

There is also a fiscal reality beneath the symbolism. Economists have warned that the Treasury could feel the effect of very large taxpayers moving offshore once the next round of self-assessment tax returns is filed. Britain’s tax system is famously top-heavy: a small number of very high earners contribute a disproportionate share of income tax revenue. Each departure of a taxpayer of Reuben’s scale is, in the short term at least, a hole in the public finances that cannot be plugged by political rhetoric about fairness.

Yet the government’s position has its own logic. Ministers argue that the abolition of the non-dom regime and the tightening of capital gains and inheritance tax are matters of fairness — that a tax system in which the very wealthy can opt out of paying for the public services everyone else funds is neither sustainable nor defensible. The political calculus is straightforward: taxing the super-rich is popular, and voters struggling with the cost of living are unlikely to weep for an 88-year-old billionaire’s move to a Mediterranean tax haven.

The risk, as Sir Jim Ratcliffe and others have framed it, is that the arithmetic of fairness eventually meets the arithmetic of arithmetic. If enough high-value taxpayers leave, the tax base shrinks and the burden falls more heavily on those who remain — which is precisely the dynamic the government says it is trying to fix. Whether Britain is experiencing a genuine exodus or a cyclical churn of footloose capital is the question on which this entire debate turns.

Two things are worth watching. The first is the autumn budget on 28 October: any further increase in capital gains tax, or the introduction of a wealth tax on assets over £10 million, would be read by the wealthy as confirmation that Britain intends to keep turning the screw. The second is the self-assessment cycle: if the Treasury’s receipts from the very highest earners begin to sag in the coming year, the abstract debate about fairness will become a concrete debate about a missing billions — and the Reuben move will be remembered as the moment the warning signs became impossible to ignore.

Sources

• The Sunday Times — Billionaire ranked second on Rich List quits UK for Monaco
• The European — David Reuben, Britain’s second richest person, leaves Britain for Monaco (confirming via The Independent)