The number of super-wealthy people in Asia-Pacific shrank last year, a study showed Tuesday, despite the region's resilience in the face of the global economic slump. This year's Asia-Pacific Wealth Report showed there were 2.4 million high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) in 2008, a 14.2 percent fall from the previous year.
The fall in HNWIs - people with investable assets of at least 1 million US dollars - is almost in line with the global average of 14.9 percent, the study by investment bank Merrill Lynch and financial consultancy Capgemini said. The combined wealth of the region plunged 22.3 percent to 7.4 trillion dollars, compared with the global average decline of 19.5 percent to 32.8 trillion dollars.
"The region's sound macroeconomic position of 2007 and its relatively small exposure to complex financial products initially appeared to offer protection against the global economic downturn," the report said. Ultra-HNWIs, or individuals with assets of at least 30 million dollars, saw a steeper drop, of 29.6 percent to 14,300, with total wealth shrinking by more than a third.
In percentage terms, Hong Kong's HNWI population was the hardest hit in the world, plunging 61.3 percent to 37,000. This was largely due to last year's steep falls on the Hang Seng Index and the property market, Stephen Corry, Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific's investment strategist, told reporters. However, the report said the growth of the region's super-rich population was set to pick up as markets such as China and India are forecast to grow faster than those of Latin America, which have been known as engines of growth.
"We expect China and India's economies to expand this year and they will drive the (region's) growth into the 2010-2020," Francis Liu, Merrill Lynch's market managing director for Greater China, told reporters. China's HNWIs fared better than their counterparts elsewhere in the region, falling only 11.8 percent to 364,000 in 2008, thanks to a combination of closed markets and robust macroeconomic growth.
Despite the decline, China surpassed Britain to hold the fourth largest HNWI population in the world after the United States, Japan and Germany. The report came after Shanghai-based Hurun Report on Tuesday released a list of the 1,000 richest people in China, which included 130 dollar billionaires. Topping the Hurun Rich List was Wang Chuanfu, founder of rechargeable battery and electric car maker BYD, whose fortune increased more than five-fold to 5.1 billion dollars last year.
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