Asia has more billionaires than US for first time thanks to booming number of Chinese entrepreneurs – as wealth of world’s megarich rises to a combined $6 Trillion
Asian countries has surpassed the United States America for having most billionaires for the first time in billionaire record book, minted on average every other day.
According to rating agencies UBS and PwC reports, it says there were 637 billionaires in Asia last year, 162 of them new entrants to the super-rich list, United America lagging behind with 563 billionaires.
The combined wealth of the world’s billionaires also increased 17% in 2016 to $6 trillion, following a dip in 2015, heavy growth came in Asian countries came from China and India.
According to the report a combination of geopolitical stability in Greater China, rising Chinese real estate prices, infrastructure spending, the growing middle class and buoyant commodity prices all joined together to boost wealth.
The report that highlighted China’s almost 50 per cent increase in billionaires past year comes days after Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need for more equal development as the country tries to shrink its large wealth gap. And the average wealth of Chinese billionaires was US$2.5 billion.
The major driver of wealth in Asia according to the report was technology as asian countries are better at deploying and integrating new technology, which for the most part is first conceived of by companies in the US.
The report further states, that new billionaire created in the region every other day if it continues Asia would overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest concentration of wealth in four years.
The fast billionaire wealth grows in Asia will depend in part on how state-driven investment in China is replaced with other sources of capital and hooks up its capital markets to the global system
The report also shows that the 1542 billionaires in the report also employ 27.7 million people worldwide through their companies roughly the same as the UK’s working population.
However, UBS and PwC’s Billionaires Insights report still believes that billionaire wealth in Asia is very volatile because it is so closely linked to the public markets.