Millionaires leaving UK at rate 10x faster than Russia – report

Britain is set to lose tens of thousands of wealthy individuals in 2025 due to tax reforms and uncertainty, according to new research cited by the Times

The UK is set to lose a record 16,500 millionaires in 2025, The Times has said, referring to a Henley Private Wealth Migration Report published on Tuesday. The organization has found that the outflow of wealthy people from Britain will far surpass both China and Russia despite significantly more geopolitical and economic pressure on those nations.

The Henley report attributes the trend to policy changes introduced by British authorities in recent years. These include the abolition of the centuries-old non-domicile tax regime in April 2024, which previously allowed wealthy foreigners to shelter offshore income from UK tax. It has been replaced with a residence-based system requiring full global tax exposure after just four years of UK residence, and full inheritance tax exposure after ten.

According to the report, the overhaul, alongside the earlier closure of the Tier 1 investor visa in 2022 and mounting economic concerns, has triggered a “historic wave” of wealth migration. The 2025 figure follows a then record 10,800 millionaire departures in 2024, marking a sharp reversal from pre-Brexit years when the UK was a net magnet for wealthy migrants.

The United Arab Emirates was listed as the top destination for departing millionaires. Henley & Partners has estimated that those leaving the UK in 2025 collectively control £66 billion ($90 billion) in investable assets.

The report also noted that the UK will lose twice as many millionaires as China and ten times more than Russia, despite Moscow being under heavy Western sanctions and having experienced a large-scale exit of foreign companies since 2022.

Russian officials have repeatedly claimed that sanctions have failed to significantly impact the country’s economic performance. President Vladimir Putin has also stated on multiple occasions that the Russian economy has demonstrated resilience and adaptability in response to Western pressure.

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Moscow has long said that Western states are damaging their own economies through energy policy, sanctions, and internal reforms. 

Commenting on the EU’s economic struggles last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that “dreadful populism has prevailed” in the West, resulting in “mostly incompetent politicians coming to power across Europe – politicians saturated with this populism and uninterested in the fate of their fellow citizens beyond the next election.”

The Henley Private Wealth Migration Report is compiled using data from global wealth intelligence firm New World Wealth, which tracks the movements of over 150,000 high-net-worth individuals through various public sources, including LinkedIn and other business portals. The analysis also incorporates visa program statistics, internal client data, property and company registers, and relocation trends across multiple jurisdictions. Henley defines millionaires as individuals with at least $1 million in liquid investable wealth.