This news service looks at how the UK-based family office industry has handled challenges of rising taxes on wealthy foreigners and domestic UK citizens; the ways that international centres are sharpening their competitive edge, and what forces encourage families to move around.

Serial entrepreneur and former Barclays figure, Vikash Gupta, cannot remember the exact moment when he wanted to quit the UK, but so far he has few regrets about exchanging London for the shiny wealth management hub of Dubai. 

A few weeks ago, Gupta, who is a co-founder of UK-based VAR Capital – a WealthBriefing award winner – and a founder of challenger bank Monument (interviewed here) – described on his Linkedin page the relief and work involved in moving from the UK. Gupta reckons that in total, the firms he has helped to create employ a total of around 200 people.

Gupta has, to coin Steve Jobs’ phrase, put a dent in the universe.

As Gupta told WB in a recent call, he has a close eye on family offices – a sector he knows well. And he’s unsurprised to read in media reports that some family offices are moving to cheaper locations in London, such as in the eastern parts of the City, or that principals are moving abroad, leaving their teams in the UK. He says there is an air of discontent over rising taxes on the wealthy, concerns about street robberies, in contrast with the appeal of new, sunnier centres.

“The [UK] government underestimates how many people have left and the impact of that. Lots of it is totally `under the radar’. And it is impossible to replace them overnight,” Gupta said via video link from his new berth in Dubai. Gupta spent more than two decades in the UK. 

“People who are entrepreneurs are restless and they are not afraid to take on change and `up sticks’. Being in the Middle East was a new opportunity,” he said.

Recent media commentary points to reasons for family offices moving some or all of their teams to more appealing places: tax, regulatory, lifestyle, security and a more pro-success culture. Not all of this speaks poorly of the UK: families often divide, younger members create their own mini-family office branches, and so forth. (More than 200 years ago, this is exactly what the Rothschilds did.) According to figures from Ocorian, 65 per cent of family offices based in the UK say they have opened more offices in different jurisdictions during the past five years, compared with 35 per cent who haven’t. Ocorian is a specialist in asset servicing for private and corporate markets as well as fiduciary administration services.

Some wealthy Russians – such as Roman Abramovich, former Chelsea FC owner – left when Russian oligarchs were hit with sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. There is also the inevitable rotation of people in and out of the UK as resident non-domicile (non-dom) status draws to an end (the remittance basis is time-limited). Even so, the end of the non-dom system under the current Labour government – replaced with a residence-based one – has encouraged outward flight, particularly given the inclusion of worldwide wealth under the UK inheritance tax net. WB interviewed a prominent female entrepreneur and TV personality, Dr Ann Kaplan Mulholland, who had been a non-dom and who has since arranged to leave for Italy.

“Capital has wings: There’s great mobility in today’s world. Wealth creators will move to where they feel welcomed and can maximise their impact,” Andy Bailey, head of private client, Guernsey and Isle of Man, at Ocorian, told this publication.

Even without UK tax squeezes, other centres’ incentives have arisen to challenge the UK's standing. Dubai and Italy, to give just two examples, have been rolling out the red carpet with lump-sum systems for wealthy foreigners (Italy) and very low taxes (Dubai). President Donald Trump has mooted a “gold card” visa system for wealthy people (although the worldwide reach of the Internal Revenue Service is a challenge.) It is not just the UK that is figuring out how to handle an outflow. In California, there’s a potential new wealth tax in the offing. That has encouraged the likes of Google’s Larry Page and billionaire investor Peter Thiel to leave. 

It is not easy to unpick how these forces affect family offices. Looking at London, for example, one cannot ignore that some UK FOs are not based in the capital, but in Scotland, the Midlands and Northeast of England. One single-family office, Ledmore Capital, has people based in Hampshire, Surrey and West Sussex, with no office in London. Sorbus Partners, a family office, is in Stafford. Other countries such as Germany are home to family offices that tend to be under the radar – which can skew where industry commenters assume where the action is. (See a two-part feature of Germany's family offices sector here and here.)

A sense of perspective
In the UK, wealth management headhunters can get close to the flows of people to and from the country. Billy Stephenson, managing director of his eponymous business, Stephenson Executive Search, counsels against alarm.

“From an executive search perspective, what we’re seeing is less a wholesale exit from the UK and more that families are separating where they live from where their teams sit – with principals becoming more mobile, while operations, teams, or specific investment functions remain anchored in London,” he told this publication. “Some UHNW individuals are unquestionably leaving the UK, largely driven by tax considerations, and that is well documented. But at the same time, London remains extremely competitive as a family office hub, even when the asset owner no longer lives here. It comes down to the depth of the talent pool. For families building serious investment teams, that still matters enormously.”

There’s also the trend of family offices becoming more international, and expanding their footprints. According to Ocorian, of those family offices it recently surveyed which are based in the UK, around 9 per cent say their family office currently has two physical offices, rising to 44 per cent with three physical offices and 48 per cent with four physical offices. Some 65 per cent of family offices based in the UK say they have opened more offices in different jurisdictions during the past five years, compared with 35 per cent who haven’t.

Various forces encourage family offices to spread out. Ocorian's survey said that out of those who have opened more offices in different jurisdictions, 93 per cent say this is due to family members increasingly moving abroad or living in different countries. Some 53 per cent say this is because their investment portfolio has diversified or become more sophisticated. A further 47 per cent say it’s to reduce the risk posed to the family from geopolitical turbulence and 20 per cent say it is for tax and regulatory reasons. Just 7 per cent say it’s because of a skills shortage.  

Generational forces
The rise of a younger generation can be as influential as grumbles about tax in deciding where family offices locate and change. Across the Atlantic, such a view comes from wealth management firm Certuity.

“There has been a lot of mobilisation of a lot of families; there is the rise of the NextGens; there is more information and communication flows between jurisdictions. We are becoming global,” Giuliano Celle, managing director, head of institutional wealth at Certuity, based in New York, told this publication. 

“As families globalise, their operating structures follow. Many US-based family offices are establishing representative offices or local partnerships in Europe (London, Madrid, Milan), Latin America, and parts of Asia, particularly Singapore, sometimes very lean, sometimes through trusted local teams,” Celle continued. “This supports cross-border direct investing, local sourcing, and governance oversight. It also reflects the fact that families today think globally by default, not opportunistically.”

Such an answer highlights that family offices sometimes move some – not all – of their staff as well as family members to be closer to where the hottest investment action is, and that’s not necessarily purely a tax consideration.

“Established offices in London are not moving to new jurisdictions…but branches and additional structures,” Stuart Pinnington, IQ-EQ’s global head of asset owners, based in Jersey, told WealthBriefing. IQ-EQ provides much of the kind of background funds and administration support that family offices look for, as well as help with advising on what jurisdictions’ requirements. It has a ringside seat on who is moving around. 

To demonstrate how it tries to capture trends of HNW individuals on the move, IQ-EQ acquired Zenith Global, an Italian business, in November 2025. The firm said at the time that it was riding a rising wave of investment in Italy – helped to some extent by the country’s attractions for HNW foreigners settling there.

He also mentioned the United Arab Emirates as a hotspot. IQ-EQ set up in the Dubai International Financial Centre as recently as 2023. 

Pinnington said there are cases of family office principals moving to places such as the UAE in the wake of changes to the UK’s resident non-dom system. “Families are moving and putting a structure around them and that is what we are seeing in practice. They are creating an investment management/deal team around them based in the UAE with support from other locations."

Real estate impact?
While they may not be decamping from London entirely as they move about, reshuffling offices' footprints is surely going to affect property prices for offices in plush areas such as Mayfair?

Talk of the demise of London as a hotspot appears to be exaggerated, reckons global real estate consultancy Knight Frank. 

“Family office requirements remain relatively constant in London and focused on the West End Core (Mayfair and St James’s) markets,” Alasdair Pritchard, partner, Knight Frank Private Office, told this publication. “Pricing has come off in recent years, albeit to a far lesser extent than the wider London market, which has given many a great opportunity to buy in.”

“That said, given the scarcity of certain types of assets in the core, pricing can, and still does regularly outperform. An example of this is the recent acquisition by a family office of a building in Berkeley Square, where [the] achieved pricing was in excess of £5,000 ($6,710) per square foot, a new record,” he said. In its third-quarter 2025 London Office Market Report, Knight Frank said office take-up in the quarter reached 2.7 million square feet, falling 23.3 per cent from the second quarter of last year, and below the long-term quarterly average.

From a rental growth point of view, Knight Frank’s Pritchard is positively ebullient.

“Since the uncertainty of Covid and spikes in construction costs, new development starts have slowed, constraining the pipeline of new stock, particularly in the West End core,” he said. “As such, we have witnessed considerable rental growth in recent years and are forecasting over 25 per cent further rental growth over the next five years. Family offices and financial occupiers are a key part of the demand for this stock, which has remained strong. Family offices are less relevant outside the West End core, where pricing has softened to a greater extent.” 

Of course, property consultancies tend not to be a gloomy bunch on the asset class, but even if there is slippage in property prices, some who spoke to WB about changes in London reckon that there could be reasons for people outside the UK to come back in.

Pinnington at IQ-EQ, for example, said the new UK residency system, in which a person who has lived outside the UK for at least 10 years can avoid certain taxes for four years, has appeal to certain groups, including those from the US. 

“We have [also] seen an inflow back into the UK of UK expats from Asia and they are repatriating money if they’ve been outside for 10 years.” If that becomes a noted trend and these people have family offices, it could eventually make itself felt in office rents.

At Ocorian, Tracey Neuman, who is executive director, told WB that facts of life such as having family members in a certain part of the world matters in ways that cannot be easily shrunk even in the Jet Age and era of the internet. As families expand, become more multi-generational and spread out geographically, they need to consider what is the optimum place to base the main family office, she said.

For example, if a family has several members in North America and others in Asia, that forces a decision. “Some timezones just don’t work,” Neuman said.

But whatever other factors are in play, there is no doubt that the UK has an outflow challenge. (There is talk that the UK is looking at overhauling an investor visa programme to encourage people to come and build long-term investments in the country.)

Regrets
From his new Dubai base, Gupta talks sadly about leaving London. “Most of those who have left the UK miss it quite a bit. It is one of the most incredible cities in the world and there are still business opportunities [in the UK].”

Concerns about street crime cannot be left out of the "quality of life" calculus that can affect the case for one jurisdiction over another, Gupta said. “People have been paying too much tax for what they get in quality of life, and they see it as unfair."

While the most serious crimes may have fallen, petty crimes and offences such as muggings and street thefts in London and elsewhere are a turn-off, he said. This contrasts with life in places such as Dubai and Monaco.

What is to be done?

“Top-level tax needs to come down…for the ultra-rich, IHT is a big thing. To take 40 per cent of their wealth is ridiculous,” Gupta replied. He gave the case of an India-based family office, with net assets worth more than £1 billion ($1.34 billion), where one of the key family members – a lady living in the UK – was faced with the impossible situation of being required to pay hundreds of millions in tax, but would struggle to do so because of capital controls that India imposes. “It did not make any sense for her to be in the UK at all,” he concluded.