There are now 715,000 millionaires in the UK according to Forbes. Oh, and 80 billionaires too.
There are a lot of foreign millionaires in the UK, and plenty of billionaires are flocking here in droves too. But why? What does the UK have that New York, Dubai and Hong Kong don’t? It’s certainly not the weather.
Despite the rain, it turns out the super-rich love Britain. London in particular has the largest concentrated populations of the super-rich in the whole world, and a lot of them are making themselves at home in Kensington and Chelsea, Mayfair, Belgravia and the infamous Bishop’s Avenue on the north side of Hampstead Heath, which is affectionately named ‘Billionaire’s Row’. London property prices have skyrocketed and they’re not slowing down, plus with developments aimed at foreign investors being built all the time, Britain is certainly trying to consciously attract these big spenders.
It’s not just the property though, the super-rich are notorious for enjoying the finer things in life and London society can offer plenty of that. Here are 15 reasons why the UK is the perfect place for millionaires.
15. Luxury stores are changing to suit foreign shoppers
Despite the economic downturn the UK suffered in 2008 and beyond, Harrods has managed to come out of it pretty unscathed, partly due to the fact that the foreign super-rich absolutely love it. Since being bought by some Qatari buyers in 2010, they have spent “£50million a year sprucing up departments”, including a floor entirely for luxury jewellery, which has become more and more popular. Shoppers from the UAE in particular are one of Harrods’ main focuses. They extend their shopping hours during Ramadan and Eid and are employing more and more Arabic-speaking consultants just to accommodate their needs and get their credit cards out even more.
This has caused some controversy however, and some of their older, British customers aren’t pleased by some recent changes made to the iconic British store. The famous music department, for example, has closed to make more room for luxury goods that appeal to foreign buyers.
14. London has always been multicultural and diverse, so everyone fits in!
London is one of the most multicultural cities in the whole world, with major festivals and events to celebrate pretty much every culture and religion you can image going on all the time.
Various areas of the city have close ties to particular cultures, from the Irish to the West African. Millionaires generally choose to live in a few select areas, where the prices are particularly eye-watering, but the attraction of other people from the same culture and country as them can only make their move over to the UK more appealing. According to the 2011 census, 37% of the London population is foreign-born, some of the major groups being Pakistani, Indian, Irish, Jamaican and Chinese.
In 2014, it was estimated that 150,000 Russians were living in London – one of the latest groups to come to London to spend their money. There are also 366,769 British Arabs in the UK as a whole, the majority living in London.
13. Britain is notorious for its deeply entrenched class system, and though it’s on the way out, the super-rich like to be part of it.
It could be debated all day whether or not there is still a British class system and whether it matters or not, but one thing is for certain – wherever millionaires in the UK go, domestic service follows.
Having a title doesn’t guarantee you have the funds for a team of waiting staff and maids anymore, just cold, hard cash. Who else is going to clean the 10 bedrooms in that palatial Kensington mansion? High-end domestic staff recruitment agencies are providing training for more and more unusual services, such as how to perform silver service on a yacht, thanks to all these rich people moving in.
12. Our schools and universities are the envy of the world.
Britain’s notable private schools and Russell Group universities make us a favourable option for the millionaires in the UK who want a good dose of classical education for their kids.
We have schools and universities older than some countries, so they’re well-established, stupidly famous and very, very expensive.
Stereotype or not, the UK is known for its exemplary education establishments. A Daily Telegraph survey even found that 15% of boarding school pupils in the UK are now foreign, largely coming from Hong Kong and Russia.
11. Our tax rules suit millionaires and billionaires down to the ground.
There’s this thing in Britain called ‘non-dom’ status, which has been the subject of a lot of debate and controversy.
It’s looking like it’s going to change quite soon, particularly if the government changes with it, but for now it’s very good news for the super-rich. Millionaires in the UK who are from other countries don’t have to pay any tax on their foreign business dealings if they’re classed as a ‘non-domicile’ here. So as long as they can prove strong links to their home country, any business they do there is untouched by UK tax laws.
10. All that art and culture we’ve got? Millionaires in the UK really want a slice, and they can definitely afford it.
A lot of those really quintessential British things like tweed, afternoon tea at Claridges and hunting, shooting and fishing make the UK really appealing to foreign millionaires and billionaires.
Millionaires in the UK like our history and they like our culture. Tatler magazine, a stalwart of the British upper-classes and one of the longest-running magazines in Britain, now has a Russian edition. They clearly love the society pages and all the beautiful jewellery that wealthy Brits enjoy, and who can blame them?
9. Speaking of the upper classes…none of them can afford their land anymore.
Ah, yes. Well, it’s a little bit awkward, but around the turn of the 20th Century, a lot of the aristocracy started selling off their land and houses because they couldn’t afford them anymore.
Which is why it’s basically the entire plot of Downton Abbey. Now, the large majority of stately homes are open to the public all year round and that’s the only way they can keep them going. Or they’ve been sold off as spas, hotels and houses for the currently very rich. If you’re a Russian heiress and really fancy being lady of the manor, rural England is absolutely the place to go, and you can pretty much buy whatever title you want.
8. London property is obscenely valuable.
Very few people can actually afford a normal London property anymore, never mind a gargantuan, palatial white Mayfair mansion.
It’s actually getting to the point where these really, really nice, posh areas of London (Kensington, Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Belgravia) are only the domain of the billionaires. Even millionaires aren’t getting a look in, because buying one of these would take their entire fortune and build it up in bricks and mortar.
Anyone with the funds though can pretty much guarantee a swanky South West London pad is going to get them a nice return when they eventually sell it off.
7. As London’s property values go up, there are even more luxury restaurants, hotels, spas and facilities to make life for the super rich even more pleasurable.
It’s smart business thinking for the hospitality trade to appeal to millionaires in the UK.
They have money to spend and generally like to go overboard during their free time, making spas and luxury hotels right up their alley. Much like Harrods, these luxury spots have done a lot to make themselves even more appealing to millionaires in the UK in recent years. There are 100,000 Russian expats in London, and the super-rich ones have created their own society balls, art collections, and wine cellars, which means gorgeous venues, art dealers and wine merchants are doing very, very good business.
6. We’re in a great position geographically, right between the US and Asia.
Getting anywhere isn’t that much hassle when you have access to a private jet, but flying still annoys even the most patient of people.
Millionaires in the UK who do business in the US, Asia, Russia and beyond can get to them all pretty easily because they’re slap bang in the middle. Of course, it’s negligible really when 9 hours of travel will equal a £100 million deal, but these things are sent to try us.
5. London has a rich history of trade and business dealings, and the majority of the world banks are right on your doorstep.
As one of the great economic powers of the world, London has a rich business history.
The most recent figures show that over 400,000 people work in the City and analysts at the Z/Yen Group found it to be “the most competitive financial centre in the world” in 2015, beating both New York and Hong Kong.
Business people flock to London to cut deals every day, and the city welcomed 17.4 million foreign visitors in 2015, many of these travelling for a good old fashioned mixture of business and pleasure.
4. Rich people generally like to hang out with other rich people. London has more billionaires than Moscow and New York.
It’s a fact. An indisputable fact. Rich people like spending time with other rich people. London is the perfect place to do that, because it turns out there are 80 billionaires in London and that’s more than any other city in the world.
There are 56 in New York and 45 in Moscow, so old London Town actually beats them by quite a bit. In other words, that’s a whole 59% of the Sunday Times Rich List, with a combined fortune of £325bn.
No wonder house prices are unbearable.
3. If you have enough cash, you can pretty much do whatever you want to your house in London.
The local authority for Kensington & Chelsea has been granting planning permission left, right and centre for increasingly insane projects since about 2008.
Due to the fact that a basement is underground and no one has to see it, planning permission is pretty easy to get, so many insanely rich billionaires have decided that their three-storey Kensington mansion isn’t quite big enough and fancy building a bowling alley several feet underground.
Security is another major concern for anyone who has a million pound painting hanging in their living room. Panic rooms and bomb-proof shelters are just as common and cost an absolute fortune once they’re personalised to an oligarchs’ very individual tastes. It’s all possible in the Royal Borough if you file the right forms and have enough money.
2. We have enough art, culture and shopping to keep anyone entertained.
A rich cultural history like London’s is not to be sniffed at, and millionaires in the UK love it because a lot if it is very expensive (a box at the Royal Opera House doesn’t come cheap).
There are enough opera houses, ballets, art galleries and monuments to wealth to impress even the most staunch of Russian billionaire mother-in-laws. The ultra-rich are human too, remember. If they’re going to move to a whole new country they’ll want plenty to entertain themselves with.
1. Loads of people bloody love the Royal Family.
The British Royals are kind of the original Royals. Our monarchy is so old and so established that practically everyone in the world has heard of HRH Queen Elizabeth II.
For some wealthy individuals, the thought of rubbing shoulders with a Royal (even if they’re a bit of a distant one) is enough to make the UK a wonderful place to be.
The Royals regularly hold events and garden parties, and if you’re significant enough in a particular field of business or the arts, you might even get an invite. I can practically hear the sound of an oligarch’s wife waiting by her letterbox…
