Welsh billionaire Sir Michael Moritz is considering applying for German citizenship because the UK has become “an uncomfortable place for Jews".
An investor and philanthropist, Cardiff-born Moritz, 79, is the richest person from Wales; he and his wife, Harriet Heyman, have an estimated fortune of about £4.4bn, according to the 2025 Sunday Times rich list. The couple were ranked 40th in that year’s UK rich list.
Although he currently resides in California, Moritz is a UK citizen – but he has revealed he is applying for a German passport as an “insurance policy” amid surging antisemitism here and in the US.
Speaking to BBC News, Mortitz reflected on his family’s experience of Nazi persecution and explained the passport, and the knowledge he could flee to Germany, would serve as a form of “mild reassurance”.
"Antisemitism is always in the air,” he said, “It’s always in the water, it’s always in the atmosphere – it has got a history of 2,000 years – it’s not going to change.
“Because of my Jewish ancestry, I'm allowed to apply for German [citizenship]. It’s the one place in Europe where what happened 100 years ago forms a very central part of the education system.”
Moritz’s grandparents and much of his wider family were from Germany and were killed in the Holocaust. His parents, however, escaped and settled in Cardiff where Moritz was born and raised.
German law states that any descendants of families stripped of their citizenship by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945 are allowed to return.
“It gives me some mild form of reassurance,” Moritz said.
The investor was knighted by the late Queen in 2013 for promoting British economic interests and philanthropic work. This included a donation of £75 million to Oxford University in 2012 to help disadvantaged students.
At the time Moritz said he was "thrilled to be considered a productive British export”.
Having built his fortune in California, investing in tech companies such as YouTube and Yahoo, he said the UK feels "far more hostile than the US" for Jewish people.
Referencing how some children at Jewish schools stopped wearing their blazers in public after October 7 for fear of revealing their identity he said: "It's all these anecdotes that strike home more than anything else."
Reflecting on the terror attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in October, which left two Jewish people dead, Moritz said: "I have cousins who live less than half a mile from [the synagogue], and while they weren't members of that particular synagogue, they knew a whole bunch of people who were there."
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