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London is no longer one of the top five wealthiest cities in the world after losing a higher proportion of millionaires than anywhere other than Moscow.
An annual report on global wealth says the UK’s capital has lost 11,300 dollar millionaires over the past year, including 18 centimillionaires and two billionaires. A centimillionaire is someone who has at least $100 million, while a billionaire has more than $1,000 million.
The study, conducted for the advisory firm Henley & Partners by New World Wealth, defines wealth as “liquid investable” assets, which means cash, bonds and shares but excludes property wealth.
The assessment was conducted before the recent stock market falls that followed the announcement of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
New World Wealth said that London, which now has 215,700 dollar millionaires, is one of only two cities in the top 50 — the other being Moscow — that has fewer rich people than ten years ago. Even Paris has seen a rise in the number of millionaires, with a 5 per cent increase over the period.
In total, London has lost 12 per cent of its richest residents since 2014, with the decline being attributed to tax increases, Brexit and the fall in the value of the pound, while Moscow has lost 25 per cent, mostly because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However, in absolute terms, London has lost more millionaires than anywhere else, with about 30,000 heading for the exit over the past ten years, compared with 10,000 fleeing Moscow.
Last week The Times reported how the exodus of wealth from the UK had accelerated sharply in the first three months of the year before Labour’s abolition of the non-domiciled tax regime.
From Monday, the centuries-old status, which allowed wealthy foreigners living in the UK to shelter their worldwide assets from British taxes for an annual fee starting at £30,000, was replaced with a much less generous residence-based system.
The new system means any wealthy foreigners who have lived in the UK for longer than four years now have to pay UK income and capital gains taxes on their global earnings.
If they stay long enough in the country, their worldwide assets will also become subject to UK inheritance tax (IHT) of 40 per cent, which is one of the highest rates in the world.
Tax advisers say non-doms are relocating to countries such as Portugal, St Kitts and Nevis, Spain, Greece, the United Arab Emirates and Italy, where taxes are either much lower or where they can pay a fixed annual fee to avoid them. Italy, for example, charges €200,000 a year to foreigners who wish to shelter their worldwide assets from local taxes.
Andrew Amoils, the head of research at New World Wealth, said high taxes in the UK relative to other countries had encouraged many wealthy investors to leave London and deterred others from replacing them.
“Capital gains tax and estate duty rates [IHT] in the UK are amongst the highest in the world, which deters wealthy business owners and retirees from living there.”
He added: “It’s worth noting that most of the companies on the FTSE 100 were started by centimillionaires, so the loss of these individuals has a massive impact on an economy.”
But he explained that there were other reasons for London’s poor performance, such as the failure to recover from the 2008 financial crisis and to nurture enough new technology businesses.
He added: “The growing dominance of America and Asia in the global hi-tech space has caused wealthy tech entrepreneurs in the UK to reconsider their base location. Brexit has arguably had an exacerbating effect on this.”
He also believes that the “dwindling importance” of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is another factor.
“The LSE was once the largest stock market in the world by market capitalisation but it now ranks 11th globally. The past two decades has been particularly poor, with a large number of companies de-listings and relatively few new IPOs [initial public offerings].”
He added: “The continued ascendance of nearby financial hubs such as Dubai, Paris, Geneva, Frankfurt and Amsterdam has eroded London’s status as Europe’s top financial centre.”
The data shows that London has been overtaken by Los Angeles and that American cities now dominate the top 50, with 11 making the list.
Overall, New York is ranked as the richest city in the world with 384,500 dollar millionaires, followed by the San Francisco Bay Area, which is home to Silicon Valley, where many technology businesses are based.
Tokyo is the third wealthiest city with 292,300 dollar millionaires, followed by Singapore.
Manchester is the only other British city to make the top 50, in 46th place with 23,400 dollar millionaires.
Australia has four cities in the top 50, China has five and Germany has three.
Juerg Steffen, the chief executive of Henley & Partners, said: “A clear pattern is emerging in 2025: cities that blend investment freedom with lifestyle dividends are winning the competition for mobile capital.
