The 2,158 billionaires across the world grew their combined wealth by $1.4 trillion in 2017, which is more than the GDP of Spain or Australia, riding on booming stock markets, a report said. World’s billionaires earned more money in the year 2017, than any year in the recorded history, said UBS Billionaires 2018 report. The wealth of richest people across the globe increased by a fifth to $8.9 trillion, according to the report. “The past 30 years have seen far greater wealth creation than the Gilded Age” it added.
Even as the US is home to most of the world’s billionaires, China is minting two new billionaires every week, according to a report by Swiss bank UBS and accountants PwC. The growth is fastest in Asia, and Asian billionaires will be wealthier than their American peers in less than three years, the UBS Billionaires 2018 report said. The total number of billionaires reached 2,158 last year, up 9 percent from 2016, the report said.
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“That period bred generations of families in the US and Europe who went on to influence business, banking, politics, philanthropy and the arts for more than 100 years. With wealth set to pass from entrepreneurs to their heirs in the coming years, the 21st century multi-generational families are being created,” it also said.
“Over the past five years, the sum passed by deceased billionaires to beneficiaries has grown by an average of 17% each year, to reach $117bn in 2017. In that year alone, 44 heirs inherited more than a billion dollars each,” it also said.