The world’s wealthiest individuals are on a roll with billionaires in Asia leading the pack.
Billionaire wealth increased 17 percent to $6 trillion in 2016, after a decline the previous year, UBS Group AG and PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report issued Thursday. Led by China, the number of the region’s billionaires surpassed the U.S. for the first time.
But don’t shed a tear for the richest folks in the U.S.: American billionaires still control the most wealth at $2.8 trillion.
The gain in total billionaire wealth was twice the 8.5 percent increase of the MSCI AC World Index.
Asia’s economic expansion saw, on average, a new billionaire created in the region every other day. Should that pace continue, Asia would overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest concentration of wealth in four years, the Swiss bank and the auditing firm said in an analysis of data from roughly 1,550 billionaires.
How fast billionaire wealth grows in Asia will depend in part on how state-driven investment in China is replaced with other sources of capital, UBS Chief Investment Officer Mark Haefele said at a press conference in Zurich on Thursday.
Rise of China
“As China hooks up its capital markets to the global system, it will have a very profound impact on capital flows -- on Europe as well," he said. The execution of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s growth policies will also influence how fast total Asian billionaire wealth overtakes the US, he said.
A combination of geopolitical stability in Greater China, rising Chinese real estate prices, infrastructure spending, the growing middle class and buoyant commodity prices all boosted wealth, the UBS report said, citing interviews with Asia’s richest people.