Chris Rokos, departing hedge fund manager, is not just a £330m tax payer
Would you like Chris Rokos, the billionaire macro hedge fund manager living in your jurisdiction? _ How about if he paid £330m ($457m) of tax and splashed cash around good causes? Well then.
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Bloomberg reports that Rokos is leaving the UK. Amidst rumours of wealth taxes and maybe even exit taxes, Rokos is going to Greece where there's a 15-year high net worth investor scheme that allows you to pay a flat €100k tax on all income earned outside Greece for the next 15 years.
As the laments for Rokos and his lost £330m gather pace, it's worth bearing in mind that he didn't just pay a lot of tax. Having got into Eton on a scholarship from a state school himself and then gone to Oxford University, Rokos is a believer in the “opportunity of education.” He's set up a new state school scholarship for talented students otherwise unable to attend Eton. He's given money to Oxford University. He's given £190m to Cambridge University. He describes himself as a person with "centrist, socially liberal views." His Cambridge donation was about helping the UK project soft power abroad.
Rokos has a thing for crumbling UK listed buildings. He has a 19th century refurbished Mews house in London, which is linked to the neighbouring house (also his) via a basement corridor. He has a formerly disintegrating 200 year-old mansion with 100 rooms in Wiltshire, which had been unoccupied for 18 years and was on the English Heritage at risk register with fungus and beetles when he bought it in 2023. At least 30 stonemasons and conservation specialists worked on it for two years. He has a house dating back to the 17th century in Greenwich, which he really wanted to build high walls around.
It's not clear what will become of these Rokos residences. Nor is it clear whether his five children will move to Greece. Most importantly, it is not clear whether other people at Rokos Capital Management, his $22bn macro hedge fund which likes to hire underrepresented students, will go to Greece with him. Given that Rokos Capital Management paid 248 people in the UK an average of $505k last year, another circa $136m of tax could be at risk if they do. If Rokos' 22 partners earning £21m each went too, the situation would be worse again.
Maybe this is all good in the quest for income equality? Maybe Rokos' mansions could be reassigned? Some might also remember that Chris Rokos, seen here looking young and rugged, has in the past made money betting that UK borrowing costs will rise. Now that he's leaving the country, it seems likely that Rokos' employees will make that bet with renewed zeal. It's just that they'll do so from Greece, where their taxes won't help with mitigation.
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