Wealth

Inequality in the United States has reached such levels lately that even members of the “one percent” have started worrying. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates hedge fund who is […]

The combined wealth of the world’s millionaires rose for a sixth straight year and topped $70 trillion for the first time ever in 2017 thanks to an improving global economy […]

The fortune of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos surged by as much as $6.6bn (£5bn) in extended trading on Thursday after the retailer reported third-quarter results that topped Wall Street estimates.

If the gains hold through on Friday, Mr Bezos will probably overtake Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s 500 richest people. Amazon climbed 8.5 per cent to $1,055.01 at 4:30 pm in New York.

The wealth held by the world’s billionaires jumped by nearly $1 trillion in 2016, and they now have more money than the GDP of the entire European Union, according to a new report.

The population of billionaires rose by 145, or about 10 percent in 2016, to 1,542 billionaires, according to the report by UBS and PwC. The wealth held by those billionaires increased from $5.1 trillion to $6 trillion, according to the report. And Asia now has the most billionaires in the world, surpassing the U.S. for the first time with a new billionaire minted on average every other day in 2016.

UBS France’s new 4.5 billion euros wealth management division, La Maison de Gestion, is looking at hiring new staff to grow the business, the company said on Tuesday.

The Swiss bank’s La Maison de Gestion arm was formed from a deal struck in December last year when UBS France agreed to buy the local private banking business of Italy’s Banca Leonardo. The new division was formally launched on Tuesday. With the transaction in France, UBS thus has acquired the access to the circle of super rich individuals and families.

Expatriates moving to Switzerland, home to some of the biggest private banks, commodity traders and pharmaceuticals companies, earn an average of more than $193,000.

That’s the highest in the world and 54 per cent more than if they’d stayed at home, a study published Wednesday by HSBC. That boost in remuneration is only surpassed by the 58 per cent increase enjoyed by expats relocating to Saudi Arabia’s petrodollar economy.

The number of millionaires in the world rose by nearly 8 percent last year to an all-time high of around 16.5 million people, with record total wealth of $63.5 trillion, according to a report by global consultancy firm Capgemini.

Booming global stock markets has catapulted an extra 1.15 million people into the high-net-worth individual (HNWI) bracket, according to figures from Capgemini’s 2017 World Wealth Report.

The US has overtaken Switzerland as the world’s richest country in terms of wealth per household. On September 27, Allianz unveiled the eighth edition of its "Global Wealth Report", which puts the asset and debt situation of households in more than 50 countries under the microscope.

At the top of the list of the 20 richest countries (net financial assets per capita, see table), a changing of the guard occurred in 2016, with the United States capturing the top spot from Switzerland.However, its lead is razor-thin and some of the credit goes to a stronger dollar.