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It’s an offshore thing
At STM, Holmes agrees that his some of his clients develop a quasi-nomadic lifestyle in their quest to avoid the taxman’s grip in their home countries.
“We have a lot of high wealth individuals who sail the Mediterranean, or follow the sun around the world,” he points out. “They spend two or three months in Spain, the Caribbean, the US and Australia, but they are not creating a taxable presence in those locations.
“The idea is to get themselves in a good position to take advantage of the upturn in the global economy [when it occurs] and therefore to try and safeguard their financial interests going forward.”
In order to achieve that goal, those who plump for the peripatetic lifestyle are forced to be more entrepreneurial in how they accumulate their wealth.
“Those that stay in one place tend to accumulate properties and pensions, and those that [move around] may invest in different ways,” says Whiting at PwC.
“The idea with the nomadic lifestyle is to source potential opportunities as they go along,” adds Holmes. “We are dealing with entrepreneurial people who have been caught in peculiar circumstances [job losses] through no fault of their own.”
Holmes says his clients are of all ages. Some are in their 50s and have been in the Middle East for over 20 years.
“Even with people that are perceived to be retired, they are always on the lookout for making the next dollar. That’s what keeps them going, that’s why they went to the Middle East in the first place,” he says.
“Safeguarding their financial interests is more of a priority for them, particularly for pension funds — they want to have minimal exposure to taxation in whatever jurisdiction they are in.”
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