With the ongoing wave of aging billionaires, wealth creation via inheritance has outpaced entrepreneurship amongst the world’s richest, according to a UBS report.
In 2022, 53 billionaire heirs inherited $150.8 billion, according to the «UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report 2023». This outpaced the $140.7 billion accumulated by 84 fresh self-made billionaires.
Within Asia, the average wealth of inheritors was $2 billion, ahead of the $1.6 billion held by the average entrepreneur in the region.
This movement of wealth will persist with more than 1,000 billionaires globally estimated to transfer over $5.2 trillion to their heirs in the next 20 to 30 years, according to the study. The Asia Pacific region is expected to account for a quarter of this wealth transfer ($1.3 trillion) with mainland China, Australia and India as the regional leaders.
Slower Growth
Overall, APAC saw the number of billionaires increase from 922 to 1,019 with total wealth rising 8.1 percent to $3.7 trillion. While this is relatively slow compared to the historical trend, UBS Global Wealth Management’s head of strategic clients Benjamin Cavalli noted that certain markets that were less sizeable experienced sharper growth.
«[Markets] with a smaller number of billionaires such as Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan, saw wealth increase by almost a third,» Cavalli commented at a virtual roundtable attended by finews.asia.
Europe Leads for the First Time
Globally, the number of billionaires increased 7 percent to 2,544 while wealth grew 9 percent to $12 trillion, led by Europe for the first time ever in the study’s history. At its peak in 2021, the world recorded 2,686 billionaires with an aggregate net worth of $13.4 trillion.
The UBS report was based on a survey of 79 billionaire clients from Europe, Middle East, Singapore, Hong Kong and the US, conducted between June 28 and September 17 this year.
