Billionaire former Labour donor Lakshmi Mittal has quit Britain amid Rachel Reeves‘ tax raid on the super-rich.
The Indian-born steel tycoon will now reportedly spend much of the future in Dubai and is registered as a resident in Switzerland for tax.
Mr Mittal had become disillusioned with changes to inheritance tax, which means his assets overseas are now subject to the levy, according to an adviser familiar to the move.
The businessman has already splashed out £152.7million for a baroque mansion at Emirates Hill in Dubai, dubbed the ‘Beverly Hills of the Middle East’.
He becomes the latest to join the billionaire exodus of Britain alongside Revolut boss Nikolay Storonsky and Nassef Sawiris, the Egyptian co-owner of Aston Villa FC.
Mr Mittal and his family are estimated to have a fortune of £14.9billion, which put him seventh on a UK rich list last year.
‘The issue was inheritance tax,’ one adviser familiar with the Mittals’ move told The Times.
‘Many wealthy people from overseas cannot understand why all of their assets, wherever they are in the world, should be subject to inheritance tax imposed by the UK Treasury. People in this situation feel they have little choice but to leave and are either sad or angry to be doing so.’
Billionaire former Labour donor Lakshmi Mittal has quit Britain amid Rachel Reeves ‘ tax raid on the super-rich
A friend of the Mittals described their departure as ‘sad’ with the family having handed out multi-million-pound donations to the likes of Great Ormond Street and Oxford University.
He was a significant donor to Labour under former prime minister Sir Tony Blair.
It emerged in March that Mr Mittal was threatening to quit Britain and had told associates his departure was in response to Labour’s decision to end the ‘non dom’ regime.
‘He is exploring his options and will take a final decision over the course of this year,’ a friend of Mr Mittal told the Financial Times.
‘There is a good chance he will cease to be a UK tax resident.’
Mr Mittal is the owner of property on London‘s exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens, which has been dubbed ‘billionaire’s row’.
He bought what was then the world’s most expensive home for £67million in 2004. It is understood he currently has ‘no plans’ to sell the estate.
Mr Storonsky, who co-founded Revolut before growing it into the country’s biggest start-up worth £56bn, revealed in October he had changed his residency from the UK to the United Arab Emirates in a filing for his family office.
At summit last year, Mr Storonsky praised Dubai’s ‘advanced infrastructure and investor-friendly policies’, according to a government press release.
Mr Storonsky, 41, was born in Russia before moving to London, where he founded Revolut in 2015.
He renounced his Russian citizenship after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is now a British citizen. Companies House filings reveal he gave his tax residency as England until October 16, 2024.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is pictured leaving 11 Downing Street on Wednesday, November 19
A Companies House filing from Storonsky Family Ltd, his family office, listed the UAE as his ‘new country or state usually resident’. The filing said he had moved there last year.
While neither Revolut nor Mr Storonsky has commented publicly on the development, a person familiar with the situation said he retains a home in the UK and will be here frequently for work.
Revolut had previously denied reports Mr Storonsky had moved to Dubai, saying: ‘Nik is based in and registered to Revolut’s UK entity.’
Brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone, who oversee a £9billion property empire in the UK and abroad, an online casino and plush Monte Carlo hotel, have quit Britain for Monaco.
Another billionaire developer, Malawi-born Asif Aziz – owner of the former London Trocadero on Piccadilly Circus – moved his tax residency to Abu Dhabi at the end of last year.
David Lesperance, the founder of tax and immigration advisory Lesperance and Partners, told the Mail in July that 50 per cent of his ‘ultra-high net worth’ clients had already departed the UK since Labour came to power and predicted half that number again would flee the imposition of a wealth tax.
Several billionaires have been open about their reasons for leaving, with Nassef Sawiris blaming Labour’s inheritance tax clampdown and a ‘decade of incompetence’ under the Tories.
Britain’s ninth richest billionaire, John Fredriksen, declared in the summer that Britain had ‘gone to hell’ and ‘become like Norway’.
The Norwegian had previously run his private firm, Seatankers Management, from an office in Sloane Square.
But he told newspaper E24 that the UK had become a worse place to do business.
