MONTHLY NEWSLETTER – NOVEMBER 2025

According to Rathbones’ economic analysis, as Rachel Reeves faces mounting pressure to close the fiscal gap, substantial amounts of wealth could be moved abroad or redirected into less productive assets. The firm estimates that implementing the tax could cost the Government around £600 million, with annual compliance and administration expenses for taxpayers exceeding £700 million.

Unlike inheritance tax, which is applied upon death, a wealth tax would require ongoing monitoring and valuation. Oliver Jones, Head of Asset Allocation at Rathbones Group, noted that a recurring wealth tax would be economically harmful, requiring annual assessments of complex, illiquid assets such as private businesses, art, and intellectual property. He warned that the process would be expensive to administer, difficult to enforce, and likely to create economic distortions.

Simon Bashorun, Head of Advice at Rathbones Private Office, added that recent changes to the non-dom regime have already slowed the arrival of high-net-worth individuals, and that a wealth tax could further accelerate the outflow of affluent residents. He said that many wealthy professionals are now exploring relocation to lower-tax jurisdictions such as Dubai or Singapore or avoiding the UK altogether.
Rathbones also highlighted that since over a quarter of UK billionaires—and an even greater proportion of the ultra-wealthy—are foreign nationals, their departure would significantly reduce any long-term revenue from a wealth tax.

The firm pointed to international experience as discouraging: Spain, Norway, and Switzerland are now among the few countries still applying wealth taxes, and their results have been modest. Since the 1990s, the number of advanced economies with such taxes has dropped from twelve to just three. Spain and Norway raise minimal revenue, far below expectations, while Switzerland’s success stems from a unique tax structure with comparatively low taxes on income, dividends, and inheritance.

As an alternative, Rathbones suggested that the UK consider reforms to property taxation or targeted adjustments to inheritance tax, which would be less disruptive and cheaper to implement. Jones concluded that while further inheritance-tax changes could be an option, increasing rates would be politically sensitive, given the widespread unpopularity of that tax.

Anna Griffiths – Clear Technical Manager

Strangely though, they both agree that Europe does one thing better than the US. And, no, it’s not “winning Ryder Cups” .

It’s how European companies communicate to their shareholders. Or rather, how FREQUENTLY European companies communicate with their shareholders.

In the US, the regulator makes listed companies give quarterly updates on the health of the business, by filing something called a form 10-Q. There’s a fairly common view that this three-month cycle collapses the time-horizon for company management, making them short term, rather than focussing on building businesses that last.
Certainly, that’s what Warren Buffett thinks. And, as of a couple of weeks ago, so does Donald Trump.

Whereas, in Europe, the requirement is to only publish data twice a year – and about half of companies do just that (47%). In the UK, semi-annual is the norm; 95% of UK businesses only give six monthly updates.
Cutting admin and reducing noise DOES feel like a win-win …but there is a flaw in this plan. Reports are coming out less often, but they’re getting much longer — in the U.S., the average annual report now tops 40,000 words.
Whereas for the FTSE 100, the average word count in the annual report was 150,000 words. HSBC’s offering came in at 340,000!

Putting that into context vs. Harry Potter books …

Although it probably wasn’t Beyonce’s intention to lead a ‘Ranch Revival’, but there’s no telling what the B-hive (Beyonce’s fan base) will do. Viral trends are very unpredictable!

Now anything can go viral including stock markets. There have been examples of this before. Sometimes a viral music trend collides with a viral stock market trend as an example we go to South Korea:
DI Corp is a South Korean business that manufactures testing equipment for semiconductors. DI Corp’s Chairman is Park Wan Ho. So far, so uninteresting…..but his son is Park Jae-Sang … a.k.a “PSY” – that PSY.

The impact on DI Corp – which is a totally unrelated business – was astonishing. Its stock price rose about 700% during the same period.

Just to be clear,  PSY has no involvement in DI Corp.and DI Corp does not produce music videos. Also it’s not clear if investors thought that the musical success of PSY would somehow lead to the success of his Dad’s company.
Research has concluded that ‘investor recognition hypothesis’ was the reason for the market reaction. Essentially, retail investors buy and sell the stocks of companies that grabbed their attention.
In 2012, Psy grabbed everyone’s attention.
Now, let’s go and look up the names of CEOs’ children that match the lead characters of KPop: Demon Hunters etc.

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