One of Ernest Hemingway’s characters in The Sun Also Rises famously said that you go bankrupt two ways: ‘gradually, then suddenly’. Becoming stinking rich, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. It’s a case of either/or.
In 2023 (the most recent year for which good data is available), 25,319 people joined the ranks of the world’s ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Some will have accrued their wealth over years or even decades, up until they crossed the $30 million mark, the most commonly used threshold for use of the prefix ‘ultra’. For many others, it will have happened suddenly, through what people in wealth management describe as a ‘liquidity event’. These pivotal moments come about when a business is sold or listed on a public stock exchange – or, of course, upon the inheritance of a sizeable fortune.
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Meet Odette
If you are lucky – or indeed hardworking and intelligent – enough to wake up one day and suddenly see all those extra zeroes in your bank account, what should be your next move? It’s a question that launches an armada of further questions, very few of which have a simple answer. And, as press coverage of myriad bankruptcies, scandals and feuds prove, it’s all too easy to get this stuff wrong.
So for this edition, we engaged in a thought experiment. Suppose there is an entrepreneur, let’s call her ‘Odette’, who is the founder and majority shareholder of a tech company that she plans to exit in the coming months. Odette believes her equity in the business is worth £100 million, she is a UK tax resident, and she and her partner want to get married soon. What should she do?
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That’s the question we put to a panel of advisers to billionaires, UHNWs and family offices with a range of specialisms. Their advice – which creates a blueprint for being rich well – begins on page 58.
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We also have separate dispatches from two very different enclaves for ambitious and/or wealthy people. The first, written by contributing editor Robert Jackman, comes from an island off the coast of Honduras which has set out to attract libertarian entrepreneurs by making it possible for them to select the regulatory frameworks under which their businesses will operate (p48). It’s an innovative take on the kind of Ayn Rand-adjacent schemes that have been backed by Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley figures. But will it work?
The other is closer to home, and concerns a much older settlement: St George’s Hill in Surrey. Established in 1911, it became a favoured countryside bolthole for the likes of John Lennon, Cliff Richard and Tom Jones at the height of their fame in the 1960s. These days it’s much more likely to attract high-profile figures of a different type, as former Guardian wealth editor Rupert Neate finds in his Spear’s debut (p68).
CIOs on short-term macroeconomic factors
Our Briefing section this time focuses on wealth management. On page 34 we assemble a brains trust of chief investment officers to help readers parse the macroeconomic forces coming their way over the next few months. There’s also a consideration of the merits of investing in forestry funds (p39), a discussion with an academic who warns against the sleight of hand employed by those whose job it is to usher investors into private markets funds (p38), as well as an analysis that suggests hedge fund managers might be up to similar tricks (p40). In this section there’s also a brace of fascinating interviews: with Manchester United goalkeeper turned UBS wealth manager Anders Lindegaard (p42), and Mark FitzPatrick (p36), the CEO who has brought the UK’s largest wealth manager back to the top of the table – or thereabouts.
Elsewhere there are appearances from an entrepreneur who hopes to bring the woolly mammoth back to life (and has $435 million in funding to help him do it – p14), a descendent of Nordic aristocrats who’s backing a sustainability charity (p16), the super-chef Michel Roux Jr (p114), a billionaire who brands himself as ‘The Stoic Capitalist’ (p30), the director of the V&A (p24), and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, who speaks exclusively to Spear’s about his impressive classic car collection (p106).
As ever, I hope you enjoy this latest edition of Spear’s magazine.
This letter first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 95. Click here to subscribe
