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 annual totting up of Britain’s richest people by the Sunday Times shows that the number of billionaires slid to 156 this year from 165 in 2024. That is 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, the compiler of the rich list, said: “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 the 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 adviser 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 past 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 the Indian-born industrialist Gopi Hinduja, 85, and family, with a fortune of £35.3bn, down from £37.1bn in 2024 because of 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 fallen to £25.725bn (from £29.2bn) because of a drop in his stake in Warner Music Group.
There are some eye-catching fallers on the list, too, including the businessman Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He has dropped from fourth to seventh, 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.
King Charles’s wealth has reportedly soared over the past year to £640m, matching the former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, who have moved in the opposite direction.
The rich list shows that the King’s personal wealth has jumped by £30m to £640m in the past 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 on to his son William.
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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