In The Days

• Source: Financial Times
• Author: Daniel Thomas
• News Date: 4/20/08

The ranks of the world’s rich swelled to 8m during 2007 as the wealthy proved immune to the strains across global economies in the latter half of the year.

“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”
—Revelation 3:17

There was a 4.5 per cent increase last year in so-called “high net worth individuals”, those with investable assets of more than $1m excluding primary residence, according to the 2008 wealth report compiled by Citi Private Bank and Knight Frank, published on Monday.

There was particularly strong growth of wealthy populations in the emerging economies of China and India, as well as those countries that have access to natural resources such as Kazakhstan.

Countries such as Brazil, Canada, Australia and Russia also each added more than 8,500 wealthy residents in 2007 on the back of the commodity boom.

The report says that the rate of growth of high net worth individuals has outpaced growth in both gross domestic product, and GDP per head, which it believes indicates that the rich are getting richer relative to their respective countries.

“This is not a perfect measure of relative wealth growth across income levels,” it says, “but there is an indication here that the plutonomy model retained its strength through 2007 and is in rude health.”

The US is still home to most of the world’s truly rich. High net worth individuals make up 1 per cent of the US population, with 3.1m people claiming to be dollar millionaires, and 460 to be billionaires.

Japan claims the next highest population of the wealthy, with 765,000 dollar millionaires, and then the UK, where there are 557,000.

The UK has seen the biggest increase in billionaires, however. Numbers rose by 40 per cent in 2007, from 35 to 49. China’s high net worth population grew by 14 per cent in 2007, and now number 373,000, almost as many as in Germany.

The report says there was little change in the investment activity of the very rich during the credit crunch in 2007, other than a shift away from structured finance. It says the very wealthy are “weathering the crunch” much better than insti tutional investors, owing to the diversity of their port folios.

More than 50 per cent invest in property, which has fuelled a rapid growth in luxury house prices across the world.

London retains its spot as the world’s most expensive place to live, followed by the tax exile haven Monaco and millionaires’ playground St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

There were the first signs of trouble in paradise last year, however, with prime property in certain areas in Ireland and the US showing a fall in price. The report’s authors warned that there were likely to be further falls this year as the economic slowdown caught up with the world’s super-rich.