Billionaires like Ray Dalio and Sergey Brin are opening family offices in Singapore, lured by the city-state's ample incentives and low taxes
- Singapore is attracting billionaires who are setting up new branches of their family offices.
- Singapore has famously low taxes and offers incentives to set up family offices.
- It's lured Google's Sergey Brin, hedge-funder Ray Dalio, and vacuum-cleaner magnate James Dyson.
Singapore is becoming a hub for billionaires looking to set up new branches of their family offices thanks to ample incentives and low taxes in the city-state.
According to a report from Bloomberg's David Ramli, Google cofounder Sergey Brin's family office has established a base in Singapore. His firm, Bayshore Global Management, set up the office at the end of 2020, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg.
Brin cofounded Google with Larry Page in 1998 and is the world's eighth-richest person with a net worth of $91.7 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. Brin, who served as president of Alphabet, Google's parent company, and Page, who was CEO, announced in December 2019 that they were stepping down from their day-to-day roles.
But both Brin and Page retained their shares - 25.1% and 25.9%, respectively - which gives them a majority stake in the company.
As Bloomberg's Peggy Collins reported in 2015, Bayshore Global Management is named after North Bayshore, the area in Mountain View, California, where Google is based.
While Brin is the most recent billionaire flocking to Singapore, he's not the only one. Ray Dalio, the founder and co-chief of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, is also setting up a family office in Singapore, Bloomberg reported last year, while James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, already has an office there.
Dyson set up a home base for his firm, Weybourne Group, following his decision in 2019 to relocate his company's headquarters to Singapore. Dyson also purchase Singapore's largest and most expensive penthouse for a reported $54 million that year, but has since sold it at a loss of around $7 million.
So what is it about Singapore that's attracting some of the world's best-known billionaires? A combination of factors: Singapore has famously low taxes, which has helped turn the city-state into an economic hub. Singapore is also becoming a haven for family offices, which help the wealthy manage and preserve their wealth, because of low costs and other incentives.
While the influx family offices for US billionaires is recent, Singapore's tax structure has attracted tech bigwigs in the past. In 2012, Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin famously gave up his US passport for Singaporean residency ahead of the company's IPO. Saverin experienced significantly lower income taxes and no capital gains tax as a result, and he's currently worth about $14 billion.