![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chris-rokos.webp\")
\t\tRokos’s hedge fund is one of the world’s most successful (Pic: Kristen Vallejo)\t<\/p>\n\t\t\tWednesday 09 September 2026 5:26 am
\n\t\t\t\t\t\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0Updated:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\tTuesday 08 September 2026 4:04 pm\n\t<\/p>\n
\t\tRokos’s hedge fund is one of the world’s most successful (Pic: Kristen Vallejo)\t<\/p>\n
Christopher Rokos was Britain\u2019s third largest individual taxpayer last year, handing over an estimated \u00a3330m. Now he\u2019s moved to Greece and no British government seems to have a plan to replace that revenue, says Damian Pudner<\/p>\n
So, Chris Rokos is off to Greece.<\/p>\n
For those who don\u2019t know the name, Christopher Rokos is one of Britain\u2019s most successful hedge fund managers. I first came across him in the early 2000s and then again during my time on the hedge fund rate sales desk at UBS between 2006 and 2012. I spoke to him on numerous occasions. He\u2019s a very smart operator who made a lot of money for his investors, and himself in the process. Good for him!\u00a0<\/p>\n
More importantly for the Treasury, he was Britain\u2019s third largest individual taxpayer last year, handing over an estimated \u00a3330m.<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s moving his tax residency to Greece and opening an Athens office for Rokos Capital Management (RCM).<\/p>\n
You can almost hear the response from parts of the left: good riddance, billionaire hedge fund manager, we don\u2019t need you.<\/p>\n
OK socialists. But who exactly is going to replace the potential hundreds of millions lost tax each year? Over successive decades Britain has developed a worrying attitude towards wealth. We increasingly treat success as a dirty word that must be taxed heavily, enterprise as something to regulate to death, and wealth as something the government must redistribute to the needy, the not so needy, and the downright lazy.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s one fairly obvious problem. Somebody has to create the bloody stuff first.<\/p>\n
Atlas shrugged<\/p>\n
It reminds me of Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand isn\u2019t everyone\u2019s cup of tea and the book certainly isn\u2019t subtle. But underneath the philosophy is an important and continuing economic question: what happens when a society becomes so obsessed with punishing and redistributing wealth that it forgets about creating it in the first place? In the book, it leads to the collapse of the collectivist system.<\/p>\n
Take Gary Stevenson. The former trader and self-described world\u2019s best \u201cinequality economist\u201d has built a huge cult-like following arguing for a wealth tax. The proposition sounds seductively easy: the very wealthy have lots of money, let\u2019s tax two per cent of it every year over \u00a310m, and Bob\u2019s your uncle, you raise billions for public services.<\/p>\n
Except you won\u2019t. It\u2019s economic illiteracy.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tRead more<\/p>\n
\t\t\tHedge fund billionaire Chris Rokos joins UK wealth exodus\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n You cannot change the return on owning, investing and creating capital and assume nobody changes their behaviour. Yet that\u2019s effectively what these wealth-tax calculations do. Tot up the wealth, apply a tax rate and voila: billions for the Treasury.<\/p>\n Except the bloke you\u2019re planning to tax has just bought a one-way ticket to Athens. That is where the politics and economics of envy becomes expensive.<\/p>\n Rokos paid an estimated \u00a3330m in UK taxes last year. Greece offers wealthy foreign residents a much more attractive flat-tax regime of \u20ac100,000 per year, plus a minimum \u20ac500,000 qualifying investment in Greece. Meanwhile Britain is discussing taxing wealth more heavily.<\/p>\n