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The owners of the Global Art Gallery Hauser & Wirth left the United Kingdom for Switzerland, joining the list of rich residents who chose to leave the country, many of which led by tax changes last year.
Iwan and Manuela Wirth moved their residence in Switzerland in early June 2025, according to documents deposited with Companies House.
Hauser & Wirth, who did not comment if there were tax reasons for this decision, said: “Iwan and Manuela Wirth are citizens and residents of Switzerland, where Hauser and Wirth were founded and continue to be seats.
The couple also have “family reasons” to return to Switzerland, said a person familiar with their reflection.
The gallery is one of the largest and most important in the world for contemporary art, alongside Gagosian, David Zwirner and Pace.
He represents artists like Cindy Sherman, Nicole Eisenman and Martin Creed, as well as the areas of Louise Bourgeois, Phyllida Barlow and Mike Kelley. He sold a massive sculpture of a spider by bourgeois in Basel art in 2022 for 40 million dollars.
He has 18 galleries or art spaces worldwide, with six in Switzerland, two in the United Kingdom and five in the United States.
The couple moved to the United Kingdom in 2005 and they have resided there since 2016 since 2016, according to documents from the Chamber of Companies. They were both born in Switzerland and created their first gallery in 1992 in Zurich, with Manuela Wirth, Ursula Hauser.
Hauser and Wirth said Iwan and Manuela Wirth had been domiciled in the United Kingdom and were not non-doms.
There has been a flow of departures from rich from the United Kingdom in the past year.
Some, like the billionaire in steel Lakshmi Mittal and the Egyptian industrialist Nassef Sawiris, have either left the United Kingdom, or plan to leave 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 abroad to avoid paying British tax on revenues and foreign gains.
Those who have decided to stay will see their global assets potentially subject to a tax on the inheritance in the United Kingdom at 40%.
The Financial Times previously reported that Reeves explored the overthrow of its decision to invoice the successions of the United Kingdom on the world assets of former non-doms, following a series of departures and lobbying by the city of London.
Others have left because Reeves reformed the alleviation of agricultural goods and the relief of commercial goods in last year’s budget. The change means that those with large areas or important companies that were previously exempt will pay a tax on successions of 20% on assets greater than 1 million sterling pounds from April 2026.
In its most recent accounts, Hauser & Wirth in the United Kingdom experienced a turnover of 144 million pounds sterling in 2023, against 167 million pounds sterling in 2022; He made a profit before tax of 9.3 million pounds sterling, compared to 6.6 million pounds sterling the previous year.
The two are no longer directors of the company but remain its co-presenting alongside Marc Payot and, as “people with significant control”, must declare any change of residence.
The couple also owns the Artfarm group, whose companies include the Groucho Club in London, Fife Arms Hotel in Scotland and restaurants in the United States and Europe.
Hauser & Wirth added that the gallery was “engaged [its] British presence comprising a new headquarters and a gallery of London on South Audley Street in the Thomas Goode building which will open in the next 18 months ”.
