The Quiet Migration

A Pivotal Moment in Wealth Migration

The year 2025 marks something rather more significant than the usual churn of capital around the globe. For the first time in a decade, the United Kingdom—that erstwhile undisputed capital of international wealth—finds itself leading global outflows of high-net-worth individuals. The numbers, as ever, have the courtesy to speak plainly: 16,500 millionaires projected to depart British shores in 2025, carrying with them approximately £66 billion in liquid investable assets.

The inflection point deserves particular attention. Prior to 2016, Britain had consistently attracted more millionaires than it lost—a position of net inflow sustained through generations of political and economic turbulence. That this should reverse now, without revolution, currency collapse, or war, tells us something important about the changed calculus of jurisdictional choice.

2025 marks a pivotal moment for global wealth migration. It reflects a deepening perception among the wealthy that greater opportunity, freedom, and stability lie elsewhere.

Juerg Steffen, CEO Henley & Partners

The Unspoken Fear

There exists, among the truly wealthy, a particular quality of silence around certain subjects. They will discuss investment performance with appropriate discretion, family dynamics with rather less, but the structural vulnerability of their wealth—the possibility that the architecture itself might fail—this is rarely articulated.

Generational wealth built on the assumption that one legal system will remain favourable is not generational wealth. It is hope.

The liability of single-jurisdiction assumption manifests in ways both obvious and subtle. The obvious: retrospective tax legislation, capital controls imposed without warning, regulatory frameworks that shift the goalposts of permissible structure. The subtle: the gradual erosion of optionality, the narrowing of strategic possibility that occurs when all one’s assets, relationships, and operational capabilities exist within a single legal and political environment.

Sovereignty is not granted. It is structured.

United Kingdom: The End of the Non-Dom Settlement

The abolition of non-domiciled status in the United Kingdom represents something rather more significant than a mere tax policy change. It constitutes a fundamental rupture in the settlement between the British state and international wealth—a settlement that had persisted, in various forms, since the Napoleonic Wars.

The March 2024 overhaul by the Conservative government, followed by Labour’s further inheritance tax changes in October 2024, created a sequence of regulatory surprises that systematically degraded planning certainty. Wealth exit as rational response—the “WEXIT” phenomenon—is apparent when one considers the asymmetry: the British state can alter its tax regime with parliamentary majority and minimal notice; the wealthy individual cannot similarly alter their structural exposure without years of careful planning.

United States: The California Warning

If Britain offers a case study in retrospective policy change, California provides the complementary warning of prospective confiscation. Proposed wealth taxes in the state—exceeding 5% annually on the largest fortunes—represent a structural threat that transcends the particular political moment. A 5% annual wealth tax, compounded over a generation, transfers the majority of a fortune to state coffers regardless of investment performance.

The global shift: founders and capital are moving overseas—not to abandon American markets, but to target them from friendlier jurisdictions.

Jason Calacanis, Technology Investor

European Union: Harmonisation as Constraint

The European Union presents a fascinating paradox. The explicit project of harmonisation—common reporting standards, coordinated transparency regimes, mutual recognition of tax judgments—has created precisely the environment that sophisticated wealth holders seek to escape. Not because they wish to evade legitimate obligations, but because harmonisation, in practice, means the lowest common denominator of structural optionality.

United Arab Emirates: The Velocity Jurisdiction

Dubai’s emergence as a pre-eminent wealth destination is not, upon reflection, particularly surprising. What is surprising is the speed and scale of its ascent. 102% millionaire growth over the past decade—a figure that becomes more impressive when one considers the global headwinds during much of this period.

The UAE’s appeal operates at multiple levels, each reinforcing the others. The absence of personal income tax, while frequently cited, is perhaps the least interesting of its attractions. More significant is the legal architecture of its financial free zones—Dubai International Financial Centre and Abu Dhabi Global Market—which operate under English common law principles with genuine judicial independence.

Singapore: The Contingency Capital

Singapore occupies a distinctive position in the architecture of jurisdictional diversification: not velocity but stability, not transactional efficiency but long-term structural confidence. The Single Family Office regime, with its tax incentives and regulatory clarity, has attracted substantial inflows of operational wealth.

Political stability operates as a premium asset class in itself. The city-state’s governance model offers confidence that the rules will not change dramatically with electoral cycles.

Hong Kong: The Reassertion

Hong Kong’s trajectory since 2020 has been the subject of considerable analysis, much of it polemical. What deserves attention from the perspective of wealth architecture is the territory’s persistent relevance as a financial centre despite—or perhaps because of—its political recalibration. The Greater Bay Area initiative offers access to Chinese capital markets that no other jurisdiction can replicate, while the English common law system provides substantial continuity and predictability.

The fortress can be besieged. The fleet cannot.

The British Exodus: London to Dubai

The non-dom structural unwind has generated migration patterns that illuminate the operational rather than emotional character of contemporary wealth relocation. Consider the prototypical case: a family with substantial international business interests, historically resident in London and benefiting from non-dom status, confronts the abolition of that status combined with prospective inheritance tax changes.

The structural response is methodical: establishment of Dubai-based holding structures, relocation of family office operations to DIFC, reconstitution of investment vehicles, and systematic reduction of UK taxable presence.

This is not tax exile in the traditional sense. It is structural diversification in response to changed regulatory parameters.

The American Tech Founder: California to Singapore

The wealth tax proposals in California have catalysed structural reviews that extend far beyond the immediate fiscal threat. Consider a founder with concentrated equity exposure, whose paper fortune vastly exceeds liquid resources. The Single Family Office regime in Singapore offers tax-efficient infrastructure, flexible fund structuring through the VCC framework, a territorial tax system that leaves foreign income untaxed, and the political stability that provides regulatory continuity.

The Russian Recalibration: London to Dubai via Neutral Ground

For internationally mobile Russian clients, the current environment presents distinctive challenges and opportunities. The comprehensive sanctions architecture imposed following 2022 has substantially constrained capital access to traditional Western infrastructure. The recalibration strategy is clear: establish neutral-ground infrastructure in Dubai, progressively reduce Western exposure, and reconstruct operational capability. The sidelining of certain markets creates opportunities for those with the sophistication to navigate complexity.

From Diversification to Structural Imperative

The quiet migration represents not an aberration but the emergence of a new normative standard in wealth preservation. The one-jurisdiction model—concentration of residence, assets, and operational infrastructure within a single legal system—has become structurally deficient, not merely suboptimal.

Independence, in this context, is the ultimate overlooked luxury. Not the independence of tax avoidance, but the independence of structural self-determination.

The quiet migration is ultimately about the reconstruction of wealth as architecture rather than number. The figure on the balance sheet—however impressive—provides no assurance of continuity, no protection against regulatory surprise, no capacity for adaptation to changing conditions. What provides security is structure: deliberate design of systems. Optionality: preserving strategic flexibility. And response capability: rapid adaptation when circumstances demand it.

The client in this framework is not supplicant but architect. The advisor’s role is not to provide answers but to enable the client’s own capacity for structural design—to bring expertise, experience, and operational capability to the client’s strategic vision.

The only jurisdiction that matters is the one you choose. The quiet migration continues. The question for each wealth holder is whether their capital will be among those who have structured their optionality, or among those who discover, too late, that their single-jurisdiction assumption has become their single-jurisdiction trap.