Could this be the clearest sign yet that the rich are leaving Britain?
It’s hard to know quite how many of the super-rich are leaving London. Some say departure numbers are well into four figures so far this year – others that the estimates are overstated.
We can’t get a precise number, but one thing is for sure: it’s happening. The anecdotal evidence of high net worth folk flocking to Dubai – from senior bankers to the co-founder of fintech Revolut – is overwhelming. Milan is also popular. As is Portugal.
But what other data could make us confident of the trend?
I had a trawl through DVLA numbers on car registrations for the first two quarters of the year.
In particular, I looked at the figures for the most expensive cars out there. The kind you’d have to be insane to buy – or insanely rich. The Ferraris, the Rollers, the Lambos. The marques that parade the streets of King’s Road and Bishop’s Avenue.
Almost all of them show a marked downturn in sales compared to last year. That’s true of the supercars, the luxury cars, as well as the hobbyist British sports cars like Ariel and Caterham.
Elsewhere, however, things look pretty rosy. Sales of Skoda, Volvo, VW, Mini and Ford vehicles are all up. It’s not true across the board – Citroen and Mercedes have all seen a dip – but the bottom half of the market is also getting more crowded, with huge sales growth for cheaper Chinese entrants like BYD, Jaecoo and Omoda.
Reverse gear
This is hardly definitive proof of the wealthy exodus, but it’s a telltale sign. And the fact that Ferrari has already said it is cutting the number of cars it sends to the UK seems to reflect my own findings.
We don’t yet have the DVLA’s third-quarter figures, but the early signs are that this trend is continuing. Aston Martin’s third-quarter results, published yesterday, saw UK wholesale volumes fall by nearly a third, while the SMMT’s September statistics showed year-to-date registrations of Maseratis – which can cost upwards of £200,000 – were down by more than 30 per cent.
Luxury brands like Bentley, McLaren and Rolls Royce account for a tiny sliver of the UK’s car market – well under one per cent. Their fortunes are highly dependent on the behaviour of the top one per cent of earners in Britain. So if their current sales are anything to go by, the rich are indeed packing their bags.