Another reason could be cultural: being a paper billionaire might be considered overrated by UK entrepreneurs and having a startup acquired for £10-20M is perfectly acceptable. Who wants to be a billionaire anyway? Considering that many visible billionaires (whether a paper one or with liquid assets) in the public light are often targets for militant groups, being quietly acquired for less than a billion dollar valuation might be the more sane tactic to choose in order to live a happy life. From numerous kidnappings such as
Freddy Heineken,
Richard Oetker,
Edward Lampert, Patty Hearst, John Paul Getty III to unexplained disappearances such as
Michael Rockefeller, who suddenly went missing in Africa; to strange deaths, from
Anni Dewani to the recent incident two weeks ago, in the
death-by-treadmill "accident" of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's husband Dave Goldberg while the two were on holiday, the life span of billionaires are often interrupted by higher rates of violence and crime from external sources. In fact,
this Forbes article states that a billionaire in China dies every 40 days, and not by natural causes.