The 6 countries where a majority of billionaires live
While 2018 was packed full of business mishaps, market highs and lows and lots of the political spats along the way, the good news is that the number of billionaires in the world is still on the rise.
According to the 2018 edition of UBS and PwC’s Billionaires Report, the number of people to join the ultra-rich club grew to 2,158 individuals worldwide with 199 entrepreneurs becoming billionaires for the first time in 2017.
The report estimated that of those 199 new self-made billionaires, 30 percent of them accumulated their wealth through innovation and business model disruption with the remainder doing so by scaling up their businesses.
According to the report, China’s billionaire entrepreneurs are the ones leading the growth, minting two new billionaires a week in 2017 alone.
“For context, as recently as 2006, there were only 16 Chinese billionaires. There are already more billionaires in Asia than in the U.S., most of them Chinese. If they continue to progress at this rate, within three years Asia’s billionaires will be wealthier as well,” the report said.
What’s more, the report found that each billionaire had on average just more than $4.1 billion, each.
Here are top six countries with the most billionaires.
1. United States
Number of billionaires: 585
Increase from last year: 4 percent
2. China
Number of billionaires: 373
Increase from last year: 5 percent
3. Germany
Number of billionaires: 123
Increase from last year: 5 percent
4. India
Number of billionaires: 119
Increase from last year: 19 percent
5. Russia
Number of billionaires: 101
Increase from last year: 5 percent
6. Hong Kong
Number of billionaires: 67
Had a 3 percent decrease from last year