Its multigenerational billionaires survived 2015 far better than those in other regions, the report says. The European billionaire’s average wealth fell just 7%, from $4.1 billion to $3.8 billion, UBS/PwC officials said.
A second-generation southern European billionaire told the survey: “While 10 years ago, our business was the growth engine to our family wealth, in recent years it has gone the opposite way. We use the returns from our private assets to support our business, allowing us to maintain and expand our market share against our competitors.”
The European region’s relatively small group of self-made billionaires experienced a similar fall in wealth. On average, their fortunes fell 8%, from $3.9 billion to $3.5 billion. UBS officials also said that Europe has the two best governments for preserving wealth: Germany and Switzerland.
Europe ranks a close second to the U.S. for total multigenerational billionaire wealth, the report says.
Where Are The Well-Heeled Blue Bloods?
Thirty-three percent of the United States’ billionaires, or 175, are multigenerational, while 15%, or 76, of the Asia-Pacific region’s are. Asia, led by China, is creating billionaires at a faster pace than the United States and Europe, the report said.
“Asia created one billionaire nearly every three days, accounting for over half of new billionaires in 2015,” says the report. Also, “Most of 2015’s new [global] billionaires were entrepreneurs and from Asia.” One hundred and fifty of the total 210 new billionaires around the world were self-made and 113 from Asia.
Indeed, although self-made American billionaires are leading the way, the overall growth of billionaires in the United States is slowing. “The country’s billionaire population grew by just five in 2015, to 538. Yet their total wealth fell by 6%—from $2.6 trillion to $2.4 trillion.”
U.S. self-made billionaires have driven this second Gilded Age that began in the 1980s. The U.S. hosts almost half (47%) of billionaire wealth. But the world’s leading billionaire economy has lost some of its momentum. Often it’s difficult to retain the billions.
The wealth is often short-lived, the report says, because of business risk. Indeed, of the fortunes that have fallen below the billion-dollar mark in the past 20 years, 90% did so in the first and second generation. More than two-thirds (70%) of the fortunes have not remained intact beyond the first generation and a further fifth (20%) were gone by the end of the second.