Loss of top spot to LVMH chief executive comes after Tesla shares more than halve in value
Elon Musk has lost his crown as the world’s richest person, after further falls in the value of shares in his electric car company Tesla.
Forbes and Bloomberg, which track the wealth of billionaires, reported that Musk had lost the top spot to France’s Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of the luxury group LVMH.
Continue reading...Editors urge ministers to end ‘endemic’ use of Slapps – legal cases designed to hinder investigations
A coalition of senior journalists and editors from across the political spectrum are calling on the justice secretary, Dominic Raab, to back a proposed law to tackle the global super-rich’s use of “abusive legal tactics to shut down investigations”.
More than 70 newspaper editors, publishers and media lawyers wrote to Raab on Tuesday demanding that the government take urgent action to stop oligarchs and kleptocrats from using their fortunes to exploit British courts, intimidating and silencing investigative journalists with strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps).
Continue reading...Coalition of 40-plus charities and groups launches amid fears of spending cuts to plug public finances
Pressure is building on the leaders of Britain’s two biggest political parties to support higher taxes on wealth amid growing fears over the impact that a renewed austerity drive would have amid the cost of living crisis.
In an intervention which comes as the new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, considers options for filling a £35bn black hole in the public finances, a new coalition of 40 charities and campaign groups – including Oxfam, Save the Children and Christians Against Poverty – said Britain’s tax system was broken and those who paid the most should “pay their proper share”.
Continue reading...Tax Justice UK calls on Rishi Sunak’s government to introduce five reforms targeting the richest people
Rishi Sunak’s new government could raise up to £37bn to help pay for public services and the energy bills support scheme if it introduced a string of “wealth taxes”, according to tax equality campaigners.
Tax Justice UK called on the government to introduce five tax reforms targeting the very wealthy, who the campaign group said had done “really well financially” during the coronavirus crisis and national lockdowns, rather than seek to save money with further cuts to public services.
Equalising capital gains tax with income tax could raise up to £14bn a year. At present many well-paid people collect their salaries via sole trader or business partnership companies, and can pay capital gains tax at a rate of 20% rather than income tax, which is as high as 45% for earnings over £150,000. CGT also applies to income from renting out a second home, and dividend income on stocks and shares.
Applying national insurance to investment income could raise £8.6bn.
Closing loopholes on inheritance tax could raise £1.4bn.
Scrapping the non-dom regime and taxing their offshore income could generate £3.2bn.
And introducing a 1% tax on super-rich people’s assets over £10m could raise an additional £10bn.
Continue reading...Donation is believed to be the largest single donation towards helping solve the problem of uncorrected blurry vision
MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist and former wife of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated $15m (£13.5m) to a social enterprise that helps provide glasses to farmers in developing countries.
Scott’s donation to VisionSpring is believed to be the largest single private donation towards helping solve the problem of uncorrected blurry vision which leaves hundreds of millions of people in poverty.
Continue reading...Brokers in Monaco told it is ‘strictly prohibited’ to advertise sale of MySky on print or the internet
A superyacht built for an oligarch subjected to sanctions over the supply of weapons to the Russian army is being discreetly offered for sale for £26m, with buyers advised that any viewings will be in the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
Brokers are being warned that the sale of MySky, built for Igor Kesaev, should not be advertised online. The vessel’s latest recorded location was in a marina on a small island four miles south of Malé, the capital island of the Maldives.
Continue reading...Billionaire becomes first Asian person to break into the top three of world’s wealthy
The Indian tycoon Gautam Adani has been named the world’s third richest person with an estimated $137bn (£117bn) fortune and becomes the first Asian person to break into the top three of world’s wealthy.
Adani, 60, who founded the mining-to-energy conglomerate Adani Group after dropping out of university, was on Tuesday ranked third on the daily-updated Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Continue reading...Ivy owner Richard Caring wins council permission to close part of Onslow Square, a busy ambulance and bus route, for two weeks
Richard Caring, the billionaire owner of the celebrity hotspot restaurant the Ivy and private members’ club Annabel’s, has won permission to close a main road in South Kensington, central London, in order to have dozens of trees planted in the grounds of his £40m mansion.
Caring, who has built up an estimated personal fortune of more than £1bn from his clubs and restaurants empire, which also includes the Sexy Fish in Mayfair, secured permission from the council to close part of Onslow Square for two weeks in order to install a crane to carry the mature trees over a row of neighbouring terraced houses.
Continue reading...The vessel was seized in March under sanctions imposed on Moscow over the war in Ukraine
A £65m superyacht owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch has attracted 63 bids at auction in Gibraltar in the first sale of an oligarch’s assets since Putin invaded Ukraine in February.
The 72.5-metre Axioma, was seized from steel billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky in March following sanctions by the UK, EU and the US.
Continue reading...Proceeds of the sale of Axioma, valued at £65m, will benefit JP Morgan rather than the Ukrainian people
A £65m superyacht of a Russian oligarch hit by sanctions will be auctioned off by the Gibraltar government on Tuesday, becoming the first of the luxury vessels to be sold off since restrictions were imposed on hundreds of rich Russians after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, the 72.5-metre Axioma is not being sold for the benefit of the Ukrainian people but for a US investment bank, JP Morgan, which claims the yacht’s billionaire owner, Dmitry Pumpyansky, owes it more than $20m (£17m).
Continue reading...Government accused of ‘shocking complacency’ over awards to seven Putin cronies
Seven Russians now under sanctions were awarded controversial “golden visas” by the UK after Vladimir Putin’s regime first invaded Ukraine in 2014, the government has admitted.
The government closed the “tier 1 investor visa” scheme in February amid the build-up of Russian forces on Ukraine’s border as it prepared to broaden its occupation beyond Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Continue reading...Global Ports Holding facility in Turkey may be breaching UK sanctions by letting vessel dock, say lawyers
A London-headquartered port operator could be breaching sanctions laws by allowing Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich to dock his $600m (£460m) superyacht Solaris at a port that it operates in Turkey.
Legal experts said Global Ports Holding, which has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2007, was taking “a very big risk” by allowing a superyacht owned by a sanctioned individual to use one of its ports.
Continue reading...Amanda Melling’s visit follows fears UK tax havens may offer loophole for those trying to avoid clampdown
A Foreign Office minister has flown to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) to hold urgent discussions on how sanctions against Russian oligarchs with cash stored in the secretive islands can be implemented, amid fears. UK tax havens may provide a loophole for those trying to escape the international clampdown.
Amanda Milling’s visit follows news that a succession of oligarchs appeared to have hidden their assets in trusts based in the BVI in a bid to put them beyond reach of UK sanctions. British sanctions laws apply in the overseas territories, and enforcement officers are supposed to have full access to registers of beneficial ownerships.
Continue reading...From its biggest private house to a disused tube station, London has long been an attractive place for the Russian president’s cronies to buy property. Their ill-gotten wealth permeated the capital at the expense of us all
For years, if not decades, the luxury property market in London and south-east England has been feasting on investment from Russia and former Soviet states. The oligarch’s mansion, with fantastical multi-level interiors containing swimming pools, art galleries and vintage car collections, has become the stuff of legend. Estate agents, lawyers, accountants, financial institutions, property companies, public relations agencies, architects and interior designers have all done well out of this abundant cash.
Meanwhile, campaigners and journalists have been sounding the alarm. London, they have long pointed out, appeared to be uniquely attractive to “suspicious wealth” – as the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International UK puts it – from all over the world, and from the former Soviet Union in particular. These alarms were mostly ignored until now, when suddenly it appears problematic to have been complicit in the workings of elites whose leader has started the most dangerous war in Europe since 1945.
Continue reading...Authorities clamp down on wealthy individuals placed on EU sanctions list over Russian invasion of Ukraine
Italian police have seized villas and yachts worth at least €140m (£126m) from four high-profile Russians who were placed on an EU sanctions list after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sources said on Saturday.
A police source said a villa owned by the billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov on Sardinia, and a villa on Lake Como owned by the Russian state TV host Vladimir Soloviev, had both been seized.
Continue reading...Deputy PM defends response to invasion after criticism the government has acted too slowly over sanctions
Russian elites could have their property seized and handed over to Ukrainian refugees, the deputy prime minister has suggested.
Dominic Raab made the remarks as he defended the UK’s response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the prime minister, Boris Johnson, called for an emergency UN summit after a Russian attack on a nuclear power station in Ukraine.
Continue reading...Critics say end of scheme risks billions in overseas investment due to myth that ‘foreign money is dirty money’
London lawyers who help the global super-rich apply for “golden visas” to enter the UK have called on the government to reconsider its decision to abolish the Tier 1 investor visa scheme, warning that it would be “enormously damaging” to the economy.
Kyra Motley, a partner at the law firm Boodle Hatfield, said the UK was jeopardising billions of pounds in overseas investment “because of a popular myth that foreign money is dirty money”.
Continue reading...Gary Hersham has been selling houses to the very rich for decades. At first, £1m was a big deal. Now he sells for £50m, £100m, even £200m. What does it take to stay on top in this cut-throat business?
Ring ring. Gary Hersham’s phone was going, as usual. The super-prime London estate agent blew through the Mayfair office of his company, Beauchamp Estates, scattering employees behind him. As he climbed into the passenger seat of the company car, a Volkswagen Golf rather than his personal BMW, I asked where we were going. “I don’t know!” he said. He found a postcode, and announced it to the driver. Ring ring. Hersham’s mobile has the high-pitched jangle of an old-fashioned telephone at fire-alarm volume. “I didn’t ask you for that,” he roared down the phone as we sat stationary outside his office. “What makes you assume that’s what I was doing? Could I speak to Emily please?” Emily, his fantastic secretary. Ring ring. Someone else was calling. “We’ve got to wait for Marcus!”
Enter, at a trot, Marcus O’Brien, Hersham’s protege: tall, slicked hair, suited and groomed, just 30. (Hersham is 68.) O’Brien had been out for a big dinner the night before, knowable only from his stating the fact: there was no sickly pallor, despite being crammed into the back seat of the Golf, which was now winding its way through Mayfair, past the members’ clubs and hedge funds and townhouses, a neighbourhood in which Hersham has been selling property for 43 years. His agency has sold houses for quantities of money that seem increasingly conceptual as they rise: Belgrave Square (£50m), Caroline Terrace (£60m), Grosvenor Crescent (£100m). Then the ultimate, a career peak in an already elevated range, the most expensive house ever sold in Britain: 2-8a Rutland Gate in Knightsbridge, sold in early 2020 for £215m.
Continue reading...While wealthiest got richer, 140m people fell into poverty as jobs were lost, wiping out years of gains for poorest, report finds
Twenty new “pandemic billionaires” have been created in Asia thanks to the international response to Covid-19, while 140 million people across the continent were plunged into poverty as jobs were lost during the pandemic, according to Oxfam.
A report by the aid organisation says that by March 2021, profits from the pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and services needed for the Covid response had made 20 people new billionaires as lockdowns and economic stagnation destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of others.
Continue reading...New ONS figures reveal inequality gap growing ever wider before the coronavirus pandemic
The richest 1% of households in the UK each have fortunes of at least £3.6m, according to new official figures that show the inequality gap was yawning even before the pandemic struck.
At the other end of the scale, the poorest 10% of households have just £15,400 or less, with almost half burdened with more debts than they had in assets, according to figures released on Friday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
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