Qatar has highest density of millionaires

SOURCE: Trade Arabia News Service (http://www.linkedin.com/)

 

Qatar has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world with 143 out of every 1,000 households having private wealth of at least $1 million, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group.

 

The country is followed by Switzerland (116), Kuwait (115), Hong Kong (94), and Singapore (82). 

 

The US had the largest number of billionaires in 2012, but the highest density of billionaire households was in Hong Kong (15.1 per million), followed by Switzerland (9.4 per million), said the BCG’s annual report on the global wealth-management industry.

 

According to the report, global private financial wealth grew by 7.8 percent in 2012 to a total of $135.5 trillion. The rise was stronger than in either 2011 or 2010, when global wealth grew by 3.6 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively.

 

Wealth increased measurably in the old-world regions of North America (7.8 percent), Western Europe (5.2 percent), and Japan (2.4 percent), mainly owing to the sharp rebound in equity markets in most countries, particularly in the second half of the year. 

Meanwhile, new wealth creation fuelled stronger, double-digit growth in the new-world regions of Asia-Pacific ex-Japan (13.8 percent), Eastern Europe (13.2 percent), and Latin America (10.5 percent). 

 

Wealth in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) saw near-double-digit growth (9.1 percent). New-world regions will account for nearly 70 percent of the growth in global private wealth over the next five years.

 

The total number of millionaire households reached 13.8 million globally in 2012, or 0.9 percent of all households. The US had the largest number of millionaire households (5.9 million), followed by Japan (1.5 million) and China (1.3 million). China should surpass Japan in 2013.

 

Offshore wealth, defined as assets booked in a country where the investor has no legal residence or tax domicile, rose by 6.1 percent in 2012 to $8.5 trillion. Despite this increase, stronger growth in onshore wealth led to a slight decline—to 6.3 percent from 6.4 percent, compared with 2011—in offshore wealth’s share of global private wealth. While offshore wealth is projected to rise modestly over the next five years, reaching $11.2 trillion by the end of 2017, wealth is increasingly moving onshore due to the intense pressure that tax authorities are exerting on offshore centres, it said.