(Dec 22): James Dyson is reshaping how he manages Britain’s biggest fortune, streamlining his sprawling business empire across three continents following new leaders taking the reins of his family holding company.
Weybourne, the Dyson family’s investment firm, has transferred funds totaling at least £624 million from a major UK entity this year to its Singapore holding company, reducing the British unit’s share capital to £1, according to an analysis of registry filings by Bloomberg.
It’s also finalised earlier plans to close two UK firms overseeing property investments and has transferred part of their share capital to another entity in Singapore, where Dyson’s eponymous vacuum maker has its global headquarters. Meanwhile, Weybourne has posted job openings in recent weeks for a “new team” in the Southeast Asia city-state to support a multi-asset investment portfolio and scaled back its US footprint after spending almost US$200 million on New York real estate.
A representative for 78-year-old Dyson — Britain’s richest person with a net worth of about US$16.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — declined to comment.
The changes are likely “part of a multi-year succession road map,” said Martin Roll, a global family business strategist and senior adviser at McKinsey & Co. It’s “long-term planning.”
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The moves signal that Weybourne’s new leadership is leaving its mark on Dyson’s fortune, taking steps to reduce the complexity of a business empire that has rapidly expanded in recent years following him extracting large sums out of his namesake technology company to diversify his wealth.
New leadership
Martin Bowen, a legal veteran from Dyson Group plc, became Weybourne’s chief executive officer in February following the retirement of former army officer James Bucknall, who held the role for more than a decade. Weybourne also promoted senior money manager Jane Simpson to chief investment officer for its financial assets in a London-based role last year, when former BlackRock Inc executive Alastair Peters became chief financial officer (CFO) in a previously unreported move.
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Weybourne’s new team in Singapore will work with the CFO unit led by Peters, who turns 43 this month and forms part of a younger set of executives at the family investment firm. Bowen, a former chief legal officer at Dyson’s technology firm who is 57 this month, is a decade younger than former CEO Bucknall, highlighting how long-standing money managers of the super-rich need to hone succession plans for their own leadership as well as for their employers.
“People forget that family offices are another family business,” said Christina Wing, co-founder of Wingspan Legacy Partners, which advises billionaire dynasties. “They also need to change.”
Like many family offices, Weybourne reflects its founder’s roots, bearing the name of a coastal village in the part of England where Dyson grew up.
The month after Bowen became its CEO in February, the firm’s main UK entity, Weybourne Ltd, returned £24.2 million in share capital to its Singapore parent company, filings show. It withdrew a further £600 million this month, reversing a transaction between the entities four years ago that a Dyson representative previously told Bloomberg helped to improve governance structures.
Separately, under plans disclosed publicly in late 2024, a Weybourne property firm based in the UK closed this month after transferring ownership of its real estate investments to a Singapore entity in a £26.4 million transaction. Another property firm in Dyson’s home nation named after his Gloucestershire estate, Dodington Park, closed this year after similarly transferring its real estate investments to the billionaire’s namesake farming business.
That inflow for Dyson Farming achieved “operational efficiencies”, Weybourne Ltd said in its 2024 accounts, filed in October, underscoring benefits from the corporate housekeeping across the British billionaire’s empire. Earlier this year, a Weybourne real estate firm in the US also ceased to be active, according to registry filings in New York, where Dyson acquired Manhattan properties in 2023 through separate entities for a total of US$195 million.
Dividend hike
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Dyson is lining up a further diversification of his fortune, which is still mostly tied up in his technology company, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. This year, his vacuum maker has committed to boosting its annual dividends to the billionaire’s Singapore-based Weybourne Holdings to £225 million, reversing a recent trend of declining payouts. It previously paid a £200 million dividend for 2024, its lowest total in at least seven years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
While there’s been a global boom over the past two decades in the number of family investment firms catering to the needs of the world’s ultra-rich, few are as large as Weybourne. Created in 2013, it now has more than 70 employees across teams in London and Singapore, where it set up an insurance unit three years ago to help protect Dyson’s financial affairs that has also recently sought to hire staff.
Weybourne last publicly disclosed net assets in the UK of £4.5 billion in 2019, when the technology firm Dyson founded more than two decades ago said it was relocating its headquarters to Singapore. Its other recent job openings include a UK position on its human resources team, a rare feature among investment firms of the ultra-wealthy.
“It keeps a lot in-house that peers outsource,” said Marc Debois, founder of FO-Next, an advisory firm for family offices. “Weybourne needs the bodies.”
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