“Money drives everything” | Meet the woman handling the sporting world's biggest wallets

Oriana Morrison wants to talk money. The University of Edinburgh-trained economist turned entertainment accountant has wisdom to share, and I am here to receive. But first, let's establish some background info.

Oriana was born and raised in the Brazilian Amazon. Her parents ran a medical clinic. One of eight siblings, she grew up wild. Maths always made sense to her, or rather, it’s how she made sense of the world. That inherent skillset and curiosity led her to Edinburgh to study development economics.

Growing up surrounded by poverty, she wanted to understand the forces shaping the world around her. The same forces that created the 2008 financial crisis. In the eventual recession that followed, no one was hiring an economics graduate, let alone an immigrant, on a two-year visa. The unfortunate timing of her entrance into the workforce pushed Oriana onto a different path. A path that merged her skillset with her passion: maths and music.

She retrained as an accountant and started helping her artistic friends with their taxes and finances. Along the way, she met her future husband Jamie Morrison. You probably know him as the charismatic drummer of the Stereophonics, but before joining the chart-topping and stadium-filling Welsh band, Jamie went through his own legal and financial battles earlier in his artistic career. Oriana learned the hard way that entertainers need to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. 

A decade later and she's now the top UK-US tax advisor for athletes and entertainers around the world. Her clients? Oh, just a few noteworthy names. Oriana’s looked after Olympic athletes, music legends, F1 racing drivers, entire football clubs and fighters like Anthony Joshua and Paddy Pimblett. Just imagine the after parties…

We sit down with the accountant to talk tax traps, financial fallacies, and the long road to the top of her industry.

Square Mile: Take me back to your upbringing. Where did you grow up?

Oriana Morrison: I grew up in Brazil, which was both tough and a total vibe. Even when life was hard - it was impossible to be unhappy when she sun was always shining and we were always surrounded by nature. Mum was from the Amazon, dad was from Rio. She was a nurse and he was a doctor. In the 80's the main capitals in Brazil were a bit saturated, so dad moved to the Amazon, where there was a GP shortage, to set up his own clinic. He met my mum who was a nurse - and cute - and one thing led to another. They each had 3 children already and then got together and had 2 more. Next thing you know - I am one of 8 siblings. We were basically the Amazonian Kardashians.

SM: Are you Kendall or are you Kylie? 

OM: I think Kendall. I keep a low profile.

SM: A massive family in the middle of the Amazon. Was growing up chaos?

OM: I grew up with four of my brothers at home. It was like growing up in a pack of wolves - we were literally wild children. Mum was eventually a single mother working full time, so she didn’t have the time to referee us, make sure it was a good clean fight. Jiu-Jitsu was really popular in Brazil in the 90s when the Gracie brothers were coming up, so all my brothers wanted to learn. And who better to practice your rear naked choke hold on than your little sister? So I had to learn how to fight my way out of any situation - especially against a bigger opponent.

SM: How did you end up in the UK?

OM: By plane. Just kidding. I wanted to study development economics and what better place to do it than the University of Edinburgh? The home of Adam Smith and modern economics as we know it today? I grew up in Brazil surrounded by poverty, which made no sense - how can a country so rich in resources be so poor? I wanted to do something about it - to end poverty and eradicate hunger. I went to uni naively thinking I was going to change the world, only to graduate in 2009, a year after the financial crisis. Talk about a reality check. After the crisis there were virtually no graduate jobs available. At the same time, immigration laws were changing, which made it harder for companies to sponsor and all I had was a two-year graduate visa - no one was going to take a chance on me. I had no other option but to go solo, so I pivoted to tax. People don’t really understand what an economist does, but everyone knows that two things in life are certain: death and taxes. I would have made a terrible grave digger.

It was like growing up in a pack of wolves – we were literally wild children

SM: Why did you start in entertainment? Who was your first client?

OM: I'm from Brazil - we LOVE music. All my friends were musicians. I was in a band, my brother was in a band... I grew up either listening to bands or hanging out with bands. I eventually married a musician. My first clients were my mates. I didn’t have the biggest clients to begin with, but when they all started going big, the next step for them was the US, which is still the largest entertainment and sports market in the world. Whenever that happened they moved to a US firm. I wanted to be able to keep my clients - especially after working for "mates rates" for so many years early in their careers. So I went to the US and qualified there. I was the first person doing UK/US Tax exclusively for entertainment and sport in London. When I came back in 2014 I put my number on the IRS website for US tax specialists in London and waited for the phone to ring. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since.

SM: What was the biggest challenge you faced when you first started out?

OM: You mean, after clawing my way out of a developing country to move to a developed one only to graduate in the middle of the Great Recession? I think that was in 2010, after my husband was fired from his first band - over text - right before the band was about to come into more serious money. He gave over ten years of his life to that band. The lawyers and accountants who were supposed to look out for him - AND THAT HE WAS PAYING FOR - turned their backs on him. They were in on it. We got completely screwed. We had no money. I had only just started training to be an accountant. The lawyers were already working pro-bono (no win no fee) and we had no money to pay an accountant to audit the books and find out how much money he was entitled to so I had to do it myself. I had no training. I had to figure it out as I went along. And figure it out I did. It ended with me going to the bank, seizing the band’s assets and freezing their bank account. After years of stonewalling and refusing to talk to us they were now singing. My husband got his settlement pretty quickly after that.

SM: How would you describe the cultural differences between the UK and US from a financial perspective?

OM: I just had this conversation with a footballer who moved to an American club. He told me he was really uncomfortable with his salary being public knowledge in the States. We don’t do that in the UK. We speculate. He was fine with his family, friends, and teammates knowing, but not the public. I explained to him that transparency actually works in his favour. They don’t want you to know the market here because then you undersell yourself. That shroud of secrecy only helps perpetuate the problem. No one values themself up to the full market value. Why should you be getting paid less than market value if you’re a better footballer? But how would you even know what the market value really is if the data isn’t available? Then it clicked for him.

SM: Somebody once said to me that people have this conception of money where if I see someone make more money, I’m somehow making less. It’s as if it’s being taken from my pocket, at least in perception.

OM: Yes, because we think it's a zero-sum game. If this person makes more then there is less for me. Reality doesn’t work like that. Of course, every resource is finite, but they are far from finalised yet. They’ve done behavioural economic studies on this. The issue is not that you are making more or less money than someone else. The problem is the comparison. Have you ever seen the cucumber, grape, monkey experiment? 

SM: Never.

OM: Brosnan & de Waal did this experiment with capuchin monkeys that were trained to do a task in exchange for food. Both monkeys received cucumber for performing the same task. Everyone’s happy. But when one monkey saw the other get a grape (grapes are better than cucumbers) for the same task while still getting a cucumber, that cucumber monkey was livid - chucking the cucumber back in the researcher’s face, banging on their cage and refusing to participate. There’s no rhyme or reason to the task they are doing. It’s completely arbitrary, but the monkey still has a strong negative reaction to that perceived inequity. Even though cucumber was perfectly acceptable before, when we compare ourselves to someone who’s better off (e.g. more money, looks or grapes) we interpret that gap as a negative reflection of our own self-worth and achievements rather than the arbitrary or ineffective allocation of resources. If even a monkey feels that way, then it’s obviously not rational.

SM: What’s the best advice you can give about money?

OM: Don’t fall for logical fallacies. Don’t fall for the traps. Something that people do a lot is justify an expense by saying it's tax deductible. “If I pay 10 grand for this, is it a tax write-off?” Yeah, it might be, but all that means is you aren’t paying tax on it (e.g. 25% corporation tax). You still spent 10 grand. You literally just justified to yourself spending 100% of 10 grand on random shit over spending 25% of 10 grand in tax but still keeping 75% of that 10 grand. 100% of nothing is still nothing. Sure, paying tax sucks but you only pay tax if you’re making money. It’s a good problem to have. These are the types of logical fallacies we all fall prey to. The world is a trap designed to part you from your money.

SM: This is the moral dilemma of marketing.

OM: It’s the cognitive fallacies we all fall for. Money is the most sensitive subject there is. It’s not sex, it’s not love. It’s money. It destroys families. It destroys relationships. But at the same time, it drives everything.

SM: What do you think the world would look like if there were no money?

OM: Violent. Money and violence can solve most problems, as long as there’s enough of either. But money is a much better incentive than violence to get people to do what you want. Think about historical times when there was no money. They were the most violent times in history. Even today, poorer countries are more violent than wealthier ones. People are far more likely to do things for the promise of money than the threat of violence. With violence, there’s only one winner in that transaction. With money, both parties to the transaction can win. Money is the measure of the human struggle.

SM: Last question: it’s 2025, what’s the best way to build wealth?

OM: 1. Make more money. 2. Spend less money, both in terms of taxes and buying shit you don’t need. 3. Pay off debt, unless said debt is leveraged against an appreciating asset growing faster than the rate of inflation. When you do make money DO NOT invest in a business that requires continued physical labour to generate income (restaurants, gyms, AirBnBs, etc.) and that require maintenance - you will just be paying to work. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket either - diversify your assets with property, cash, pensions, bonds, stocks, etc. You should create a reasonable risk profile and don’t try to beat the market unless you can afford to lose, so opt for major, indexed global funds. That way, no matter which way the wind blows, you make money.

And for the love of god and all that is holy, do not invest in in your own wine or gin brand.

You can follow Oriana Morrsion here, and reach out to her here.