Asia now has the highest number of billionaires

For the first time in history, Asia becomes home to the most number of billionaires outnumbering the United States. Asia now has 637 billionaires with China leading the pack. It is also expected that Asia will overtake the world’s largest billionaire market in terms of total billionaire wealth.

The total number of billionaires in the US are 563 and Asia now has a lot more billionaires than the US. Europe comes third with 342 billionaires. Asia is quickly adding more number of billionaires which lead to its first place around the world. Asia added 162 new billionaires last year leading the billionaire count to 637. This is 23% growth in numbers. US added only 39 new billionaires. And the increase in Europe’s billionaires remained 1%.

However, US remains at the top spot in terms of total wealth concentration. US billionaires have a wealth of $2.8 trillion combined and the total wealth in Asia is $2 trillion. As mentioned before, it is expected that Asia will also overtake the US in terms of total wealth soon.

Unsurprisingly, China led the growth in Asia’s billionaire count with 27% increase in the number of billionaires. China has 318 billionaires right now. Singapore saw a 24% increase with 21 billionaires, Hong Kong now has 69 billionaires with 8% increase and Japan registered a growth of 22% with 33 billionaires.China has the most number of self-made billionaires as well. Out of $804 billion total wealth in China, $789 billion was self-made. However, in Singapore, only $27 billion of the $59 billion wealth was self-made while the remaining $32 billion is multi generated. Billionaires in Singapore most commonly earned their wealth from the health industries, real estate and consumer & retail businesses. And Singapore remained the only market which saw no drop-offs.

Asia has the most number of publicly listed companies. Out of 568 billionaire companies in Asia, 63% are publicly listed. On the other hand, only 37% of the 421 US companies and 40% of the 256 companies in Europe are publicly listed.

As mentioned earlier, China has the most number of billionaires in Asia and the average age of billionaires in China is 55, which is 6 years less than the US and 7 years less than Europe.

Moreover, 93% of billionaires in China are males and only 7% of them are females. And the average wealth a billionaire holds in China is $2.5 billion which is less than most of the countries with billionaires.