Britain’s highest paid woman relocates to Cyprus

THE highest-paid woman in Britain, hedge-fund manager Elena Ambrosiadou of Ikos Partners, is relocating to Cyprus.

According to the Sunday Times, Ambrosiadou, who has an estimated wealth of £200 million, is quitting London because she believes Cyprus offers a better environment in which to grow the business.

A spokesman for Ikos said: “Elena has a five-year strategic plan to grow the assets under management from $2.8 billion at the moment to $10 billion by 2010.

“Cyprus offers a good environment in which to do this. There is a more benign tax environment, a highly talented English-speaking workforce, and it is closer to Middle Eastern investors.”

Having become BP’s youngest-ever senior executive at the age of 27, Ambrosiadou started Ikos, which means ‘home’ in Greek, in 1992 as one of the first hedge funds set up in London.

She put $100,000 of her own money into an account that would trade foreign exchange based on a computer program she designed. When the fund went up 50 per cent in two years, she decided to work on it full-time.

Since then, the flagship financial fund has generated a total return of 144.4 per cent.
According to documents filed at Companies House, Ambrosiadou, 46, the only director of Ikos, was paid a total of £15.9 million last financial year.

She quietly built Ikos into one of the most successful hedge funds in the world from an office near Tower Bridge in the east of the City.

But as of July 1, Ikos’s head office is in Cyprus, regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm will keep its Brighton research office, but London will be used only as a base for meetings.

The Sunday Times Rich List for 2006 placed Ambrosiadou 295th in the rankings of Britain’s 1000 richest and 25th wealthiest woman. The Queen is only 15th with £300 million.

Ambrosiadou once said: “I grew up as a person in Thessaloniki and as a professional in London, both of which gave me massive advantages.”