Review: Bloomberg’s reporting of an exodus of billionaires worth $160 billion does not hold

A Bloomberg article published on 4 October 2026 claimed that a billionaire exodus from the UK over the past two years has created a “$160 billion problem” – or left a “$160 billion hole” – for the UK. Press in the UK and around the world used the Bloomberg article to more explicitly report that the UK had lost $160 billion – or $160 billion had been transferred out of the UK.

The article says that the $160 billion figure is calculated using data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The article mostly relies on UK Companies House filings to determine the residences and relocations of the billionaires in question.

Our review of the Bloomberg Billionaire Index and UK Companies House filings finds that the data from these sources does not support the Bloomberg article’s headline claim.

Bloomberg claims that 14 entries on its “Moving out” billionaires list met two conditions: (i) they have moved out – or announced they will move out – within the past two years and (ii) their wealth is collectively worth $160 billion. Meeting these two conditions, Bloomberg writes that the billionaire exodus from the UK “leaves $160 billion hole”.

However, Bloomberg’s own reporting and data shows that half of the billionaire entries on the list do not meet one of the two conditions. Claims that the UK has suffered a $160 billion “problem” or “hole”, or has simply “lost” $160 billion, due to billionaire exodus over the past two years therefore do not hold.

It is worth noting that the Bloomberg article does not specify what it means by the “past two years”. While a two-year period from the article’s publication date would start from October 2024, the article frequently contextualises its claims of billionaire exodus within the time frame of tax changes enacted or announced since the Labour government took office in July 2024. For our review, we use the longest time frame possible that sustains the article’s contextualisation: the announcement of the 2024 General Election in late May 2024.

We find that 3 of the 14 entries do not meet condition (i), ie the people in question had not moved out since the 2024 General Election as claimed. Jeremy Coller left the UK before the elections were announced but returned afterwards in May 2026 and remains currently resident in the UK. Nassef Sawiris had already been reported by Bloomberg in 2023 to have left the UK as part of the billionaire exodus. And UK registry filings for Leonidas and Nicholas Lavari, a single entry of Bloomberg’s list, show the brothers to be resident in both the UK and Cyprus, contradicting Bloomberg’s claims that the filings conclusively showed the brothers to have relocated to Cyprus.

Four other entries on the billionaire list were credited with wealth that is not theirs, or not theirs alone, thus not meeting condition (ii). Bloomberg attributes to Shravin Mittal and Troels Povlsen the wealth of their richer family members. To John Fredriksen, Bloomberg attributes wealth that, according to filings by his own companies, he does not legally own nor have an economic interest in. To Mohamed Mansour, Bloomberg attributes a fortune more than double what other sources estimate to be the worth of the whole Mansour family fortune.

We expand on all seven entries in the annex below.

Another major issue our review found with Bloomberg’s reporting is that Bloomberg’s own data showed that only $39 billion (24%) of the $160 billion reportedly lost from the UK was UK-based to begin with. This drops to $31.5 billion (20%) when adjusting for entries that did not meet both of the above conditions required for the headline $160 billion “hole” claim. This UK-based wealth largely consists of wealth that cannot be feasibly relocated, like real estate empires and two English football teams.

Most of the wealth included in the $160 billion “hole”, according to Bloomberg’s data, actually belongs to non-British enterprises founded and headquartered outside of the UK long ago. Some of these non-British enterprises are so immediately recognisable as non-British that their inclusion in the $160 billion “hole” would surely raise eyebrows among readers. This includes enterprises like German sportswear brand adidas, the Norwegian airline and one of India’s biggest real estate investment vehicles. Also included was one of India’s biggest telecoms conglomerate, Bharti Airtel, which reportedly has 5 times more subscribed customers in India than there are people living in the UK. The full wealth of all these enterprises forms part of the $160 billion that some papers reported was taken out of the UK.

Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, where billionaires are resident is often irrelevant to where their wealth is located, where they invest and employ staff. Even the question of where billionaires pay tax is not immediately clear based on their residence: the superrich can often use tax schemes to underpay tax. Where Bloomberg’s article claims billionaires have left because loopholes that allowed them to not pay tax are closing, the logical conclusion then is that their migration does not significantly lower what they pay in tax, since they were already benefiting from the loophole to underpay tax.

This is especially the case of Bloomberg’s and the wider press’s reporting about an exodus of non-doms. By definition, a non-dom is an individual who resides in the UK but is allowed to pay tax as if they resided outside the UK – which means paying less tax. Therefore when non-doms change their official residence to outside the UK – in response to changes to the non-dom special tax break – there isn’t significant real change to how the UK taxes them. The official change in residence simply matches the long-running reality of their residence for tax purposes. Tax-wise, it is a continuation of the status quo not a change of it.

While our review finds that the Bloomberg article’s claims don’t hold up, the point here is to demonstrate a wider pattern of inaccurate or misleading reporting in the wider UK press on wealth exodus. The reporting is inaccurate not because we contest it with other sources, but because it is contradicted by the sources it claims to be based on – Bloomberg’s own data. We have demonstrated this same pattern with the UK press’s reporting on data from the Henley Private Wealth Migration report.

Tellingly, even the Henley Private Wealth Migration report – which for years was the primary source for most of the news reporting on wealth exodus but has now dropped its millionaire exodus claims after we and others scrutinised its data – now concedes that knowing where a high-net worth individual is resident does not clarify much:

“Determining where someone ‘lives’ is equally contested…many of those who formally departed continued to spend most of their time in the country…Program applications, similarly, often measure demand for optionality rather than realized movement: second citizenships and residence rights are widely acquired as insurance against future instability, not as declarations of intent to relocate.”

We provide a more detailed breakdown in this Excel sheet.

Annex

Jeremy Coller

According to the latest filings available for Jeremy Coller on Companies House, Jeremy became resident in England again in May 2026. Jeremy Coller had previously left the UK on 6 April 2024 before the 2024 UK general election was announced in late May 2024, prior to returning in May 2026.

Nassef Sawiris

Bloomberg already reported in December 2023 that Sawiris “joins billionaire migration” when he announced plans to move family office (NNS Group) to UAE. He is reported to have moved residence in 2025 by FT, but told the FT: “You can’t blame Labour” and instead blamed 10 years of Conservative rule.

We find that the choice of “triggering point” from which Bloomberg considers a billionaire to have relocated to be inconsistent. With the case of Chris Rokos, the announcement of his move in 2026 before it happens seems sufficient to consider the billionaire as part of the “exodus” from the UK. Bloomberg includes in Rokos in the billionaire list although he is still currently resident in the UK. Going by the same standard, we believe a consistent approach would rule out Sawiris from the list, because he announced his move in Dec 2023. This is indeed confirmed by the fact that Bloomberg already reported the billionaire to have joined the billionaire migration from the UK back in December 2023.

Leonidas and Nicholas Lazari

Bloomberg appears to base its determination of the Lazari’s on Companies House filings. Companies House filings from Leonidas and Nicholas Lazari’s UK-based companies list them as resident in Cyprus as of 1 January 2025. However, Companies House filings from their UK-registered overseas companies list them as resident in the UK (see all the NBS TOPCO and NBS Holdings companies here). Their UK-registered overseas companies have OSCH03’s dated as of 3 Jan 2025 that change their service address (London address) but not their residence address (remains UK). These filings maintained that the Lazari’s continued to be resident in the UK despite being  dated two days after the Lazari’s changed their residencies to Cyprus on their UK-based companies. The Lazari’s resident country therefore cannot be conclusivly deteremined from Companies House filings.

Shravin Bharti Mittal

Bloomberg claims that Shravin Bharti Mittal’s relocation to the UAE adds $23.3 billion to the $160 billion “hole” left by billionaires leaving the UK. This claim does not hold up for several reasons.

First, the $23.3 billion is the wealth that the Bloomberg Billionaire Index attributes to the whole Mittal family, not just Shravin. Second, the large share of the Mittal family fortune is owned by Shravin’s father Sunil, who has long lived in India. Third, almost all of the family’s fortune, according to Bloomberg, comes from Bharti Airtel, a telecoms conglomerate based in India, which father Sunil founded in India in 1995 and currently chairs. Bloomberg’s profiles for Bharti Airtel does not list son Shravin as an executive nor as a board member. It is therefore implausible to conclude that the entirety of the Mittal family fortune, which was built in India and is largely owned by father Sunil who remains resident in India, has suddenly left the UK because the Shravin has relocated away from the UK.

While Bloomberg does not list an executive nor board-level connection between Shravin and Bharti Airtel, it did report that Shravin previously ran Bharti Global, the family’s international investment fund, which is registered in Jersey, with a UK establishment office in the UK. Bloomberg reported that Shravin handed the reins over Bharti Global to his sister Eiesha Bharti Mittal when he relocated away from the UK to the UAE in 2025. Eiesha remained at the time and to today resident in the UK. This further undermines Bloomberg’s claim that Shravin’s relocation from the UK results in a relocation of the Mittal family fortune.

Lastly, Shravin sits on the board of Airtel Money, a subsidiary of Airtel Africa, and since Airtel Africa’s July 2026 AGM he has also been Deputy Chair of Airtel Africa itself, a UK-incorporated, London-listed company controlled by Bharti Airtel. He took on that role more than a year after Bloomberg reported he had left the UK (see fillings here and here). Notably, Airtel Money launched on the London Stock Exchange on 9 October 2026, just 5 days after the Bloomberg article claimed Shravin had taken the whole Mittal family fortune out of the UK with him.

John Fredriksen

Bloomberg reports John Fredriksen’s main shareholdings are held through the Cyprus-based companies Hemen Holding and Geveran  which are owned by two trusts he set up “for the benefit of his immediate family”, with a Jersey trustee, C.K. Limited. According to the 2025 annual reports of Frontline, SFL and Flex LNG, Fredriksen “is neither a beneficiary nor a trustee of either Trust and has no economic interest” in the shares, and the family members who benefit “do not have absolute entitlement to the Trust assets”. Bloomberg attributes much of Fredriksen’s wealth to these shareholdings which are held through the trusts. Bloomberg claims that Fredriksen’s relocation adds $19.2 billion – the full value of his fortune – to the $160 billion “hole” left by billionaires leaving the UK.

The Tax Justice Network has pioneered research on trusts, exposing the way in which trusts can give individuals complete control and benefit of their wealth while legally having no ownership or rights to benefits over that wealth. Legally speaking, Fredriksen had no ownership of, or economic interest in, the shareholdings to which Bloomberg attributes his wealth when he was resident in the UK prior to his relocation. Whether Fredriksen truly had no control over the wealth held by the trusts, or gains no benefits from that wealth, cannot be determined from filings alone and by design is practically unknowable. What is certain is that the legal arrangement of the trusts renders Fredriksen residence completely meaningless to the wealth the trusts holds. Therefore, for the purposes of Bloomberg’s reporting, where Fredriksen is resident has no bearing on the shareholdings it attributes to him and it adds to the $160 billion “hole”.

Mohamed Mansour

Bloomberg puts Mohamed Mansour’s fortune at $18 billion, which is more than four times Forbes’ estimate of $4 billion, and more than double Forbes’ figures for all three Mansour brothers combined ($7.2bn), who share ownership of the family conglomerate. Two of them, Youssef and Yasseen, live in Cairo, and his son, who runs the family’s London investment arm Man Capital, remains UK-resident. Bloomberg itself has valued their entire family wealth at $6.8bn back in 2022. We therefore conclude Bloomberg’s reporting significantly over-estimates Mohamed Mansour’s wealth.

Troels Holch Povlsen

Bloomberg claims that Troels Povlsen’s relocation to Denmark adds $5.3 billion to the $160 billion “hole” left by billionaires leaving the UK. This claim does not hold up. Bloomberg identifies Denmark-headquartered fashion retail company Bestseller as the source of Troels’s $5.3bn, although Bestseller has been owned and run by his son Anders since 2001. Anders has been resident in Denmark since 2009 at the latest. Bloomberg does not list Troels as an executive nor board member of Bestseller UK, nor of Bestseller AS. Bloomberg’s only lists Troels as a board member of Bestseller Ireland. It is implausible to conclude that wealth of Bestseller, which Anders has owned and run as a Denmark resident for nearly two decades, has now become absent from the UK because father Troels has moved to Denmark in 2025.

It is worth nothing that Anders Povlsen is Scotland’s biggest private landowner and was this year named Scotland’s richest person for the fifth year in a row by the Sunday Times Rich List, despite Anders long being resident in Denmark. This emphasises the point that where high net worth individuals are resident can often have little bearing on where they own wealth, invest, employ staff and pay tax. It also emphasises the UK press’s geographical designation of wealth is often inconsistent. Anders long-time residence in Denmark does not bar the wealth he derives from Bestseller from being framed as possessed from within Scotland. But at the same time, the relocation of his father to Denmark permits that same wealth to be framed as no longer possessed from within the UK.