There are now 100 billionaires living in the Chinese capital, Beijing, according to the Chinese research unit, Hurun, giving the city more billionaires than any other city in the world, and having five more than New York.
This is despite China’s recent economic slowdown and stock market instability. Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of Hurun and a British subject, says that this could be due to Chinese market regulators allowing a flood of new share issues after holding back Initial Public Offerings for several years.
Mr Hoogewerf founded Hurun in 1999. (His Chinese name is Hu Run, hence the title of the company.) Hurun has established a reputation for understanding China’s wealthy citizens. These latest figures come from its fifth annual Global Rich List.
Hurun maintains that not only has Beijing overtaken New York for the number of resident billionaires, but that as a whole China now has more billionaires than any other single country, with 568, up from 478 a year ago. The USA has 535. Overall, Hurun finds that there are 2188 individual billionaires in the world, a rise of 50% from 2013. Of these, 630 are of Chinese origin.
When it comes to nationality, however, Americans still lead the way. Nine out of the top ten of the world’s super-rich are Americans, with Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, leading the way. His estimated fortune is $80bn. Given that Mr Gates has given away $20bn in philanthropy, this makes him the first person alive to have made $100bn.
Two Europeans are in the top ten: Amancio Ortega of Spain, founder of the Zara fashion group is third; and Bernard Arnault, the French founder of the retail group LVMH is joint tenth.
The total amount of wealth in the hands of the super-rich increased by 9% to $7.3 trillion. This is more than the GDP of Germany and the UK combined and almost half that of the USA. The average age of billionaires is 64, which is the same as in the last two years. Of these, 69% are self-made. Sixty-nine are under the age of 40; China leads the way here, with 28 young billionaires.
Women fare better among the younger group than they do overall. Among the under-40s, 21% are women, whilst overall only 15% of billionaires are women. They range in age from Yik-Chun Koo Wang, co-founder of Johnson Electric, and Maria Franca Fisollo, of Ferrero Rocher, both of whom are 98 years old; to Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the US drug company, Theranos who has just turned 32.
But, as financial companies always say, “Investments can go down as well as up”, and 729 individuals saw their wealth decrease. Among the hardest hit were Russians. The rouble, which fell in 2014 continued its downward spiral by a further 19% drop, and mining, metals and energy performed badly. Russia has 13 fewer billionaires than a year ago. Sixty-six live in Moscow.
