Alvotech founder Robert Wessman warns he may leave UK over ‘anti-wealth’ tax raid

The Icelandic-born billionaire behind the Nasdaq-listed biosimilars group Alvotech has become the latest international businessman to warn that Britain’s tax is making the country unaffordable from mobile money.

Róbert Wessman, 56, founder and chief executive of Alvotech and owner of fast-growing French wine business Maison Wessman, told Business Matters in an interview at his Pall Mall club that “the whole package” of inheritance tax, capital gains tax and political instability is driving him to leave.

“It’s just that the whole system has changed a lot, making it very difficult, not just for foreigners to come here, but for people who are rich, who live here, who were born here, and have always been here, to live here,” Wessman said.

His warning comes as Britain digests the most impressive edition of the Sunday Times Rich List in living memory, with one in six members of the 2026 list out and the number of UK billionaires down to 157, twenty fewer than four years ago. About a third of the 350 British people on the main list no longer live in Britain.

‘It is no longer a pro-business country’

Wessman, who moved his family from Reykjavík to London in 2019 and opened the Hammersmith head office of his investment vehicle Aztiq two years later, said he was no longer considering the UK as a place to do business.

“At the same time, stability is not really there. You had Brexit, it was a big issue for industry, for the country, for business, and then all the tax rules now,” he said.

He spoke before former health secretary Wes Streeting, who has launched a Labor leadership bid against Sir Keir Starmer, promised what he called an “active wealth tax”, focusing on combining capital gains rates with income tax. This proposal is called by the partners at about £ 12 billion a year.

Asked about the desire of politicians to tax the rich, Wessman did not avoid: “We see this in many countries, that this may be the flavor of the day for politicians.

His comments echo a growing chorus of warnings from international business owners. Henley & Partners has predicted that Britain will lose more millionaires than any country bar China this year, and a BDO poll recently found that two-thirds of the UK’s wealthiest people have considered relocating, citing policy inconsistencies as a bigger problem than the headline tax rate itself.

From Icelandic generics to Nasdaq biosimilars

Wessman has made, and lost, fortunes before. He turned Delta, an obscure Reykjavík generics business, into Actavis, one of the world’s biggest drugmakers, before losing around €250 million in the 2008 Icelandic banking crash. That episode sparked a long and difficult legal battle with fellow Icelandic financier Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson over pre-crisis purchases.

Undeterred, he has founded seven companies in three decades and now plows a fortune into Alvotech, a Nasdaq-listed, Icelandic and Swedish group he positions as a global challenger to biosimilars.

The group has invested $2 billion since 2013, employs 1,500 workers, most of them in Reykjavík, and was purposely built as the “fourth leg” of Iceland’s economy along with fishing, tourism and manufacturing. Alvotech has five biosimilars approved on the market, revenue of $593 million last year and is targeting $650 million to $700 million by 2026. It is currently valued at about $1 billion in New York.

Wessman holds a 35 percent stake in Luxembourg-owned Aztiq, and another 30 percent in partnership with Temasek, a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, and private equity house CVC Capital Partners.

Biosimilars, close copies of complex biological drugs whose patents have expired, are prohibitively expensive to develop and often trigger patent litigation, as Alvotech learned in its dispute with AbbVie over the autoimmune blockbuster Humira. Wessman says they are essential if government-sponsored health care systems are to avoid being “sunk” by the costs of modern biologics.

A château, two million bottles and Norah Jones

His diversification into wine began as a hobby in 2004 with the purchase of the 12th century Château de Saint-Cernin, near Bergerac, and the release of the first vintage in 2016. Maison Wessman is now on track to produce around two million bottles this year, supplying French retailer Intermarché for jazz and Jones for American Jazz. communication after playing Enrique Iglesias at his wedding.

‘We are traveling with a lot of money, a lot of jobs’

Wessman, who is not a native, said he moved to London “against the tide when Brexit happened” because of the capital’s reach for his businesses in Asia, the United States and central and eastern Europe. His Russian-born wife and six children settled in London’s “world-class” schools.

“London is an amazing city to live in. It has an amazing education. It has everything to offer. It has an amazing history,” he said.

But he believes Brexit has been a strategic mistake for what he calls a “very proud nation”, leaving Britain less integrated with European chains and severely diminished as a place to list.

“Since Brexit, most of the big banks have not presented the UK as an alternative, as a place of listing,” he said.

That listing problem now comes with a major financial overhaul. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has scrapped the centuries-old non-domestic regime and replaced it with a new four-year residence test for income and foreign profits, and a domicile-based inheritance tax that captures the worldwide assets of those who have lived in the UK for ten of the last twenty years. The capital gains tax rate was also increased in the October 2024 Budget to 18 percent and 24 percent.

The first evidence is unpalatable: almost 1,800 non-doms have already left the UK after the reforms, raising serious questions about whether this package will deliver the £34 billion target of the Treasury.

Wessman said he recently looked at buildings in Milan and made it clear he didn’t like being pushed into that area.

“I don’t regret paying higher taxes in the UK,” he said, “but it has to be within certain guarantees and within certain limits. I sit with my tax adviser and get an update two or three times a year on what’s going to happen next, and it’s all over the place. This doesn’t encourage anyone to stay here.”

“I really like to live here. But if that’s the case, I think when you have mobile money, which can be used anywhere, it will bring out a lot of people.

“We’re leaving with a lot of money. We’re leaving with a lot of jobs. We’re leaving without thinking that the UK would be a good idea to build any R&D or anything. That’s sad.”

For a government banking on rich non-housing areas to fund public services, that’s a warning from the exact type of global, job-creating, IP-rich innovator the Treasury insists it still wants to attract.