Chris Rokos, the founder of London-based hedge fund Rokos Capital Management, is preparing to switch his tax residency from the United Kingdom to Greece and open an office in Athens, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the arrangement.
The move makes Rokos, 55, one of the most prominent names yet in a string of wealthy financiers leaving Britain since the government scrapped its non-dom tax regime in April 2025. That change ended a system under which wealthy UK residents could avoid paying British tax on income earned abroad, bringing their global earnings into the scope of UK taxation for the first time.
A significant taxpayer
Rokos paid approximately £330m ($447m) in UK tax last year, according to the Sunday Times Tax List, which placed him third among Britain’s highest taxpayers. Rokos Capital Management, which he founded in 2015 and which remains headquartered at 23 Savile Row in London with offices in New York, Washington DC and Singapore, manages roughly $20-22 billion in assets. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index puts his personal net worth at around $4bn, though some UK reports cite a figure closer to £2.6bn-£3bn.
Greece has positioned itself as an attractive destination for wealthy newcomers. Under its special tax regime, qualifying new residents can pay a flat annual tax of about €100,000 (roughly £86,000) on foreign-source income for up to 15 years, regardless of how much they earn abroad.
Part of a wider pattern
Rokos is not the first high-profile financier to relocate. Icelandic investor Thor Björgólfsson has moved to Italy, while Checkout.com founder Guillaume Pousaz and Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris have also been reported to have left the UK, citing tax concerns. Commentators point to a combination of factors beyond the end of non-dom status, including higher UK taxes on private equity carried interest, inheritance and capital gains.
The news broke on the same day UK Chancellor John Healey delivered a speech pledging to make Britain a ‘country of wealth creation,’ a coincidence that quickly drew political attention.
Chris Rokos is Britain’s third-highest taxpayer. He has made huge contributions to charities and educational causes across our country. Yet another wealth and job creator leaving Britain is bad news for all of us. — Andrew Griffith, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
Griffith, the opposition’s Shadow Chancellor, argued that departures like Rokos’s reflect the consequences of recent tax rises. “This is what happens when a government hikes taxes. Our best and brightest are choosing where to live, and they are not choosing Labour’s Britain,” he said.
The government pushed back on the framing. Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, asked about the Rokos case in a Sky News interview, said he could not comment on individual decisions but maintained his confidence in the country’s prospects. “I don’t know the individuals, so I can’t comment on his individual decisions, but I believe the UK is a great,” he said, according to Yahoo News Canada.
To put Rokos’s UK tax bill in perspective, £330m is roughly equivalent to the combined annual tax contributions of about 21,000 average British households, based on an average family tax bill of £15,700, according to analysis cited by IndexBox.
This article is free to read. It always will be — no paywall, no account, no tracking.