.jpg)
.svg)
The architecture of Britain’s economic stability is showing visible cracks this week as steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal becomes the latest—and most significant—industrial titan to abandon the UK. The 75-year-old billionaire’s departure for Switzerland comes just days before Chancellor Rachel Reeves is due to deliver a highly anticipated second budget, a timing that signals a profound vote of no confidence in the government’s fiscal direction.
Mittal’s exit is not merely a personal relocation; it is a bellwether for a much darker economic trend that threatens to hollow out the UK’s tax base. While the government’s rhetoric has focused on "broadest shoulders" bearing the heaviest burden, the reality unfolding in the City is one of capital flight. As the super-rich depart, they take with them not just their personal fortunes, but the investment potential, job creation mechanisms, and philanthropic spending that underpin much of the British economy. The Treasury now faces the grim paradox that by squeezing the wealthy too hard, they may end up with empty coffers, leaving the average taxpayer to plug the gaping hole left by fleeing billions.
The driving force behind this exodus is understood to be the Chancellor’s aggressive overhaul of the non-domiciled (non-dom) tax regime. For over two centuries, this system allowed wealthy foreign residents to pay tax only on their UK earnings. However, the new Labour government’s reforms have shifted the goalposts dramatically. The breaking point for tycoons like Mittal was not income tax, but the looming threat of inheritance tax (IHT) being applied to worldwide assets. For global industrialists with business empires spanning continents, the prospect of the UK Treasury seizing 40 per cent of their global estate is viewed not as taxation, but as confiscation.
Lakshmi Mittal is a figure whose biography reads like a history of modern globalisation. Born into a steel-trading family in Rajasthan, India, he began his career working in his father’s mill before striking out on his own in Indonesia in 1976. It was there that he founded the plant that would eventually grow into ArcelorMittal, the world's second-largest steel producer. Mittal’s genius lay in identifying a fractured global steel industry and systematically consolidating it, a strategy that culminated in the audacious 2006 takeover of Luxembourg-based rival Arcelor. Today, the company is worth over £25 billion, employing 125,000 people globally. Since moving to Britain in 1995, Mittal has been a fixture of the London elite, owning a stake in Queen’s Park Rangers football club and maintaining a property portfolio that includes three mansions on Kensington Palace Gardens, affectionately known as "Billionaire’s Row."
Yet, even deep ties to the British establishment are proving insufficient to anchor wealth against the rising tide of fiscal hostility. Mittal joins a rapidly growing list of entrepreneurs who have concluded that Britain is no longer open for business. The sentiment was bluntly summarised by Norwegian shipping magnate John Fredriksen, who relocated to Dubai earlier this year claiming Britain had "gone to hell." similarly, German investor Christian Angermayer fled to Switzerland, branding the government’s non-dom changes a "death blow" to the UK’s attractiveness as a financial hub.
The exodus is not limited to traditional industrialists. The technology sector, often touted as the future of the British economy, is also bleeding talent. Nik Storonsky and Herman Narula, the visionary co-founders of Revolut and Improbable respectively, have both voiced severe concerns regarding the tax environment, with movements toward Dubai signaling a shift in where the next generation of tech unicorns will be built. When innovators leave, they take the jobs of the future with them, a loss that will likely be felt by British workers for decades.
As Mittal settles into his new residency in Switzerland, with plans to divide his time between the Alps and a new mansion on Dubai’s Naïa Island, the pressure mounts on Downing Street. The Chancellor’s strategy to fund public services through levies on the ultra-wealthy appears to be backfiring in real-time. If the exodus continues at this pace, the UK risks becoming a wasteland for private capital, forcing the government to either slash public spending or hike taxes on working families to make up the difference. The departure of the "Steel King" may well be remembered as the moment the dam finally broke.
