Business 4 min read By Callum Montgomery
Reuben's Monaco Move Highlights UK Wealth Drain
David Reuben, the 88-year-old property magnate worth $13.1 billion, has left London for Monaco, becoming the latest billionaire to quit Britain after the abolition of the non-dom tax regime. The move comes as California votes on a similar billionaire tax.
David Reuben, the 88-year-old property magnate whose fortune is valued at $13.1 billion, has left his Holland Park home in London for Monaco, his spokesman confirmed. The move makes him the latest in a growing line of ultra-wealthy individuals to depart Britain following the abolition of its long-standing non-domicile tax status.
Reuben, who shares second place on the Sunday Times Rich List with his brother Simon, had been a beneficiary of the non-dom regime, which for more than two centuries allowed wealthy UK residents with permanent homes abroad to avoid UK tax on overseas income. That status was scrapped last year, and a new residence-based system took effect on 6 April 2025. The change brought long-term residents’ worldwide assets within reach of Britain’s 40% inheritance tax, a prospect that tax advisors had warned would be the biggest sticking point for the country’s wealthiest settlers.
Monaco, which levies no income, capital gains, or inheritance tax, has long been a favoured destination for London’s ultra-wealthy seeking to shield their fortunes from the UK Treasury. Simon Reuben has lived in the principality for about 40 years after moving there for health reasons. The brothers’ combined fortune is estimated at almost £28 billion. David Reuben’s spokesman confirmed the move but declined to comment further on the reasons behind it.
The departure is part of a wider exodus. More than a dozen billionaires worth a combined £120 billion have quit the UK in the two years since Labour took power, according to an analysis of Bloomberg Billionaires Index data reported by the Evening Standard. That tally does not include Reuben. Chancellor John Healey now faces pressure to raise revenue in his first budget on 28 October.
Across the Atlantic, a similar drama is unfolding in California, where early voting opened this week on Proposition 40, a one-time 5% levy on the state’s roughly 200 billionaires. The measure is projected to raise $100 billion. Unlike Britain’s already-dismantled regime, California’s tax is still subject to voter approval, and some of the state’s wealthiest residents have not waited for the result.
Six of California’s 214 billionaires were widely reported to have left before the initiative’s 1 January 2026 residency cutoff, including Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, car-loan magnate Don Hankey, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and film director Steven Spielberg. By one recent calculation, Page, Brin, Thiel and Kalanick alone would have owed about $29 billion, more than a quarter of the measure’s projected haul. Brin has since donated $102 million to Building a Better California, the group leading the opposition, and could owe roughly $13 billion if the tax passes.
Opponents have spent more than $187 million against about $32 million in support. Two billionaire-backed countermeasures, Propositions 41 and 42, would nullify Prop 40 if either draws more votes. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna rallied for Prop 40 in San Francisco on Saturday, with Sanders calling it the most important ballot initiative in the country. Governor Gavin Newsom is a critic, warning that billionaires can simply move to another state to avoid it.
Not every billionaire is running away. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg Television he had not thought about the tax once and would pay whatever Silicon Valley levied. «We chose to live in Silicon Valley and whatever taxes they would like to apply, so be it,» Huang said. «I’m perfectly fine with it, it never crossed my mind once.»
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