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The owners of global art gallery Hauser & Wirth have left the UK for Switzerland, joining the list of wealthy residents who have chosen to leave the country, many prompted by tax changes last year.
Iwan and Manuela Wirth moved their residence to Switzerland at the start of June 2025, according to documents filed with Companies House.
Hauser & Wirth, which did not comment on whether there were any tax reasons for the move, said: “Iwan and Manuela Wirth are citizens and residents of Switzerland, where Hauser & Wirth was founded and continues to be headquartered. They are spending more time in Switzerland now as they are working on forthcoming projects there while also overseeing others in the US and UK.”
The couple also have “family reasons” for returning to Switzerland, said one person familiar with their thinking.
The gallery is one of the world’s largest and most prominent for contemporary art, alongside Gagosian, David Zwirner and Pace.
It represents artists including Cindy Sherman, Nicole Eisenman and Martin Creed, as well as the estates of Louise Bourgeois, Phyllida Barlow and Mike Kelley. It sold a massive sculpture of a spider by Bourgeois at Art Basel in 2022 for $40mn.
It has 18 galleries or art spaces around the world, with six in Switzerland, two in the UK and five in the US.
The couple moved to the UK in 2005 and they have been officially resident there since 2016, according to Companies House documents. They were both born in Switzerland and set up their first gallery in 1992 in Zurich, along with Manuela Wirth’s mother, Ursula Hauser.
Hauser & Wirth said Iwan and Manuela Wirth had been domiciled in the UK and were not non-doms.
There has been a flood of departures of wealthy individuals from the UK in the past year.
Some, such as steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal and Egyptian industrialist Nassef Sawiris, have either left the UK or are planning to depart because of the abolition of the non-dom regime, announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves in October 2024.
The regime allowed British residents who declared their permanent home as being overseas to avoid paying UK tax on foreign income and gains.
Those who have decided to stay will see their worldwide assets potentially subjected to UK inheritance tax at 40 per cent.
The Financial Times has previously reported that Reeves was exploring reversing her decision to charge UK inheritance tax on the global assets of former non-doms, following a spate of departures and lobbying by the City of London.
Others have left because Reeves reformed agricultural property relief and business property relief in last year’s Budget too. The change means that those with large estates or significant companies that were previously exempt will pay inheritance tax at 20 per cent on assets above £1mn from April 2026.
In its most recent accounts, Hauser & Wirth in the UK had turnover of £144mn in 2023, down from £167mn in 2022; it made a pre-tax profit of £9.3mn, up from £6.6mn the year before.
The pair are no longer directors of the company but remain its co-presidents alongside Marc Payot and, as “persons with significant control”, need to declare any changes of residency.
The couple also own the Artfarm Group, whose businesses include the Groucho club in London, the Fife Arms hotel in Scotland and restaurants in the US and Europe.
Hauser & Wirth added that the gallery was “committed to [its] UK presence including a new London HQ and gallery on South Audley Street in the Thomas Goode building which will open in the next 18 months”.
