The rich are different, we are told. So what does a typical billionaire look like?  Is he or she a 30-something Californian in chinos and trainers or a third-generation East Coast sophisticate? Maybe a European industrial magnate or an Asian shipping tycoon?

Some real-life billionaires fit these descriptions, but the billionaire profile is changing significantly.

To find out how the dynamics of the ultra-wealthy are evolving, UBS commissioned PwC to study the large global markets that account for 75% of all wealth. We looked at data for over 1,300 billionaires in 14 countries to see what has been happening since 1995.

The study busts some myths. For instance, the study found that 90% of self-made billionaires have a college degree—indicating that Bill Gates dropping out of Harvard before founding Microsoft was a career move that would-be tycoons may not want to emulate.

The study also found that half of the billionaires have worked for a big company. Moreover, most of them have taken on partners while on their road to riches.

Over the last 20 years, global GDP has more than doubled, from less than $28 trillion to over $77 trillion. Billionaires have significantly increased their wealth in that time, adding $4.7 trillion in the markets we looked at.

Self-made entrepreneurs make up two-thirds of billionaires, up from well under half in 1995, and they’ve accumulated an even larger share of the wealth accumulated by billionaires—75%, or $3.6 trillion.

The geographic composition of the billionaire cohort is also changing. For most of the 20th century, billionaires were almost exclusively an American and European club. The last 20 years have seen a major shift, with Asian billionaires now accounting for more than a third of the entrepreneurial billionaires.  
This is no surprise given the unprecedented growth rates we have seen in many Asian countries. And given that Asia and other emerging markets will continue to grow faster than the global average, that trend should continue. Indeed, in the first three months of this year, we saw almost one billionaire a week being created in China.

The U.S. accounts for around half of the new entrepreneurial billionaires. But technology is not the main source of this wealth, as you might think from all the media attention given to Silicon Valley and figures such as Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  

The financial services sector is actually number one in billionaire creation, followed by technology and consumer industries. Given the U.S. contains by far the largest pool of wealth globally, this is no surprise. America’s global leadership in both technology and financial services also means we shouldn’t expect U.S. dominance of billionaire status to change anytime soon.

In Europe, half of all billionaire wealth has come from consumer industries, with no other sector accounting for more than 10%. Interestingly, it is the only region where the health-care sector appears in the top four, perhaps reflecting the aging of the continent.

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