Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris formally closes his London family office, completing a UK exit triggered by the end of the non-dom tax status

Nassef Sawiris has formally closed his London family office, Bloomberg reported on April 24, completing a departure from Britain that the Egyptian billionaire began setting in motion more than 2 years ago when he decided the country's tax changes had made it unworkable for him to stay.

The London operation of NNS Advisers, the single-family office Sawiris founded in the British capital in 2016, has now shut. The closure marks the final institutional step in an exit that unfolded in stages: he registered NNS Group in the Abu Dhabi Global Market in July 2024, resigned as director of the London branch in November 2024, changed his personal residency to Italy in early 2025, and has now formally closed the London office itself. The family office managed an estimated $2.5 billion to $5 billion in assets from its Mayfair base.

What drove him out

The proximate cause was Britain's abolition of the non-domicile tax status, a two-century-old arrangement that allowed wealthy foreign nationals living in the UK to pay tax only on income and assets sourced within Britain, shielding their overseas wealth from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The reforms, which took full effect on April 6, 2026, removed that protection entirely, exposing the global fortunes of people like Sawiris to UK taxation for the first time.

Sawiris had benefited from non-dom status for over a decade. Once the government confirmed it was going, his calculus changed. He moved to Italy, where the alternative is a flat annual levy of €200,000 ($220,500) regardless of global income and asset base. At his level of wealth, that is substantially cheaper than what the UK's reformed tax treatment would cost him annually.

He did not leave quietly. He pointed to what he called "years of incompetence" by the UK's Conservative government on tax policy as the key factor behind his decision. Billionaires.Africa