Millionaire Migration Mania? Why Henley’s Latest Wealth Report Feels More Like Marketing Than Reality
Henley & Partners claims 142,000 millionaires are relocating in 2025 — but are the numbers real, or just PR spin?
Every year, Henley & Partners drops a wealth migration bombshell that ricochets across the internet and pops up in headlines from Bloomberg, The Telegraph, and Forbes, to name just a few. Politicians quote it in parliament (“We are losing our wealth creators!”) and it becomes fodder for think tanks and policy debates.
This week, they did it again. Their Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2025 predicts a record 142,000 millionaires will relocate internationally this year — with Germany losing 400 and Italy gaining 3,600.
Sounds dramatic, right?
Only… as someone who actually speaks to high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) every single day, I can tell you this:
🚩 These numbers don’t add up. At all.
How Many Millionaires Are There in the UK — According to Henley?
Let’s be honest:
There are over 600,000 millionaires in the UK by Henley’s definition, which includes only liquid investable assets — meaning cash, stocks, bonds, and crypto, excluding primary residence value.
Other sources like UBS and Credit Suisse place the total number of millionaires (all assets included) at around 3 million. But that broader number includes property-rich households and business assets — not useful for tracking actual capital flows.
So Henley’s forecast that 16,500 liquid millionaires will leave the UK in 2025 represents roughly 2.7% of the total.
Not insignificant — but not quite an “avalanche.”
Germany: 400 Millionaire Exits? Laughable.
According to Henley, only 400 millionaires will leave Germany in 2025.
That is absurd.
My firm alone has direct contact with over 1,000 HNWIs per year from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. A significant portion of them are either in the process of leaving, already relocated, or planning an exit.
We see entrepreneurs selling their firms, crypto investors looking for capital gains protection, and pensioners escaping the looming inheritance tax reforms.
The true figure is many multiples of Henley’s estimate. Germany is suffering from:
Overregulation
High tax pressure
Geopolitical anxiety
Exit tax (Wegzugsbesteuerung)
Add to that the upcoming global minimum tax and the tightening of AStG — and you have the perfect storm for high-net-worth capital flight.
Italy: 3,600 Incoming Millionaires? Really?
Henley says 3,600 millionaires will move to Italy in 2025. On what basis?
Here are the facts:
Italy's flat-tax non-dom regime (EUR 100,000/year) saw around 1,000 new applicants per year in its best years.
In 2024, the government doubled the minimum tax to EUR 200,000, making the scheme significantly less attractive.
Italy remains:
Bureaucratic
Legally unpredictable
Unfriendly to entrepreneurs unless highly structured
Yes, the lifestyle is great. But tripling the intake during a year of tax increases? Highly implausible.
But Here's the Real Loss: Not the Millionaires, but the Middle-Tier Earners
The report obsessively tracks HNWIs (net worth over $1 million), but completely ignores the flight of upper-middle-class professionals:
British lawyers in Dubai
Accountants in Singapore
Fintech execs in Zug
Crypto bros in Portugal
Consultants in Thailand
These are not "millionaires" on paper — but many earn £150–500k per year, pay a lot of UK income tax, and now pay zero.
Over 200,000 Brits have moved to the UAE since 2020. Not all are permanent expats, but enough are staying to make a fiscal impact. Most of them didn’t need a second passport — they just left quietly.
The Real Risk: A Hollowing-Out of the Productive Class
What does it mean for the UK economy?
It's not the ultra-rich leaving that hurts most — it’s the mass departure of tax-paying professionals in their prime.
The UK’s tax base is unusually dependent on the top 1%. According to HMRC data:
The top 1% pay 29% of all income tax
The top 10% pay over 60%
Losing even 10,000 middle-to-upper-tier earners has more impact than 1,000 retired millionaires cashing out in Mallorca.
So when Henley frames millionaire outflows as the main story, they miss the bigger economic picture.
Is 16,500 Millionaires Really an “Exodus”? Let’s Do the Math.
Let’s be clear:
Henley’s 600,000 UK liquid millionaires number is internally consistent. And yes, losing 2–3% of them is worth tracking.
But compared to the 3 million total UK millionaires reported by other institutions, it’s still a niche audience. And these millionaires are not always the ones with the highest recurring income.
Meanwhile, the professionals actually keeping the economy ticking — earning six figures and paying huge income tax bills — are disappearing in even greater numbers. And they don’t show up in Henley’s headline figures.
So What Is the Point of the Report, Really?
Let’s call it what it is:
✅ A marketing tool for the investment migration industry
✅ A signal to governments about their fiscal competitiveness
✅ A data-lite talking point that generates media coverage
But it is not a deep economic analysis.
It tells us where rich people say they’re going — but not why, how long they’ll stay, or what impact it has on public finances, labor markets, or long-term growth.
In reality, a country might gain 3,000 millionaires but lose 30,000 productive workers, 1,000 company HQs, or its entire crypto sector.
What Henley Gets Right — And What They Miss
Let’s give credit where it's due.
Henley is correct about the direction of flows:
The UK is indeed facing a massive “WEXIT” thanks to the April 2025 non-dom reforms.
The UAE continues to dominate — for tax, banking, lifestyle, and prestige.
Thailand is quietly eating Singapore’s lunch.
And yes, France, Spain, and Germany are no longer wealth magnets — they’re the opposite.
But beyond that, the granularity of their projections feels more like a brochure than a dataset.
How do they arrive at these numbers? They don’t publish a methodology. They don’t separate permanent relocations from Plan B citizenships or residency-for-tax-play moves. And they don’t account for intra-year reversals, where families try a new country and flee after 9 months of tax hell or administrative chaos.
It’s not serious demographic work — it’s part sales tool, part think piece.
What Should Policymakers Really Be Tracking?
If you want to know whether your country is getting richer or poorer — don’t just track millionaires.
Track:
How many young high earners are leaving
Where entrepreneurs are moving their companies
Where capital is being banked and invested
Whether school enrollment and home purchases are going up or down in key expat hubs
Millionaire migration is symptom, not cause. The real disease is a broken social contract between productive individuals and overreaching governments.
Final Thought
Henley & Partners is brilliant at what they do. Their marketing is world-class. Their global reach is unmatched.
But if you’re a serious investor or entrepreneur planning to relocate — treat their reports like you would treat a glossy hotel brochure:
📸 Pretty pictures.
📊 Questionable stats.
💼 Useful only when paired with boots-on-the-ground advice.
Need help navigating this landscape?
Book a consultation. My team and I advise HNWIs daily on how to legally reduce taxes, set up proper offshore structures, and build resilient global lifestyles — without falling for hype.
