IN THE WORLD of palatial homes, designer goods and luxury cars, one city still stands clear above the rest.
London remains home to more “ultra-high net worth individuals” (UHNWIs) than anywhere else on the globe.
But for anyone with a keen eye on the the jet set, the Asian mega-cities are expected to close the gap on the UK capital as the top location for the world’s most-privileged inhabitants within the next decade.
Global property firm Knight Frank’s latest Wealth Report said there were 172,850 people who qualified as UHNWIs last year.
To make it into that category you need to have a fortune of at least $30 million to your name. That elite club represents less than 1% of the number of everyday millionaires on the planet – and a minuscule fraction of the world’s population of nearly 7.3 billion.
This is where they sit on the wealth pyramid:
Europe was home to the biggest share, with 60,565, more than 30 times the number of super-rich people to be found in Africa, the continent with the fewest UHNWIs.
Some 4,364 lived in London, compared to 369 in Dublin, the report said.
However Knight Frank’s global head of research, Liam Bailey, said New York was expected to overtake London as the key city for the uber-wealthy within a decade as Europe’s star faded.
Looking to the future, one constant remains: the rise of the Asian powerhouse cities, the relative decline of the European centres,” he said.
Singapore and Hong Kong were predicted to have the biggest increases in ultra-rich residents, while developing hubs like the Serbian capital Belgrade, Panama City, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Yangon in Myanmar were earmarked as “cities of the future” for the wealthy.
A separate report from Sotheby’s and researchers at Wealth-X, which specialises in selling other firms data on UHNWIs, said London was a particularly popular location for Indian buyers.
Unsurprisingly, Hong Kong was a winner with the Chinese super-rich, as were Singapore and Paris, while New York was the top destination for cashed-up Brits.
Here are the top cities for UHNWIs last year, according to the Wealth Report:
Number of UHNWIs: 4,364
UHNWIs: 3,575
UHNWIs: 3,575
UHNWIs: 3,008
UHNWIs: 2,690
UHNWIs: 2,690
UHNWIs: 1,521
UHNWIs: 1,471
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