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Asia emerges as cradle of billionaires: report

THE US and Europe had been the main hubs of wealth creation, however the landscape is changing with Asia, especially China, emerging as a cradle of billionaires, according to a report today.

In 2014, the US is home to 47 percent of the self-made billionaires, followed by 36 percent in Asia. Europe was in the third place with only 17 percent of the self-made billionaire population. 

The report expected Asia to overtake the US as a hub for wealth creation in the next five to ten years, driven by strong growth in self-made billionaires.

Data for the last five years have pointed to a shift of center of wealth creation to Asia, especially China, where a new billionaire was created almost every week in the first quarter of 2015.

“In emerging markets, there were relatively few billionaires before 1995. Now the billionaire entrepreneur is an established phenomenon and China, for example, has created a significant share of the world’s self-made female billionaires,” said the report.

By the end of 2014, more than 1,300 billionaires surveyed globally have a total wealth of US$5.4 trillion, increased nearly sevenfold from US$700 billion in 1995, according to the UBS/PwC 2015 Billionaire Report released today.

Of them, 66 percent were self-made billionaires, who created more than US$3.6 trillion between 1995 and 2014, said the report, which presents findings of a survey on wealth generation in the past 19 years. 

While US entrepreneurs have created most of the wealth amid a wave of innovation in technology and finance, Asia’s new industrialists, consumer product tycoons and real estate investors have also crystallized their wealth from rapid macro-economic growth, globalization and urbanization.

The survey also found 82 percent of all self-made billionaires have a college degree, confronting the current myth of billionaire dropouts. Some 23 percent of self-made billionaires stared their first venture before the age of 30, while 68 percent did so before 40.

The report said the wealth growth is likely to slow down in the next 10 to 20 years as the wealth creation is cyclical and will level off as a consequence of rising inequality, increasing taxes and asset price deflation. 




 

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