Asian entrepreneurs in Britain generate wealth three times as efficiently as the national average, according to a business study released Monday. Asian wealth increased by 69 percent compared to an overall gross domestic growth of 22.8 percent between 1998-2005, according to the study "Asian Entrepreneurs in the UK", by Barclays Business Banking.
The report also underlined that the focus of Asian business has shifted from traditional areas such as textiles and manufacturing to sectors such as pharmaceuticals, information technology and media.
"Asian wealth is now built on a much broader base of entrepreneurs who are challenging traditional stereotypes and making serious money in hi-tech industries," said Barclays Business Banking boss Satish Kanabar.
"As a result, Asian wealth creation is more important than its headline contribution to overall economic growth would indicate. Asian entrepreneurs are actually in the vanguard of the UK's emerging high-tech, service economy."
Other key findings of the study, based on Britain's 200 richest Asians and written by Dr Spinder Dhaliwal, a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Surrey University, include:
- Asian wealth creation is no longer reliant on the performance of a handful of Asian entrepreneurs - whilst almost two-thirds of Asian wealth was generated by the top 20 in 1998, by 2005 this had fallen to 30 per cent. - less than one per cent of wealth was generated by non-business activities indicating that little wealth was inherited.
-- wealth generated by Asian women within the top 200 more than quadrupled between 1998 and 2005.
The findings follow the publication in April this year of the latest Sunrise Radio Asian Rich List 300, the self-styled "official index of Britain's Asian millionaires".
It estimated that the combined wealth of the 300 multimillionaires included has risen from 24.9 billion pounds (36.9 billion euros, 47.5 billion dollars) in 2005 to 35.5 billion pounds this year.
Just three percent of those on the list inherited their wealth, compared to a third of entrants on the respected Sunday Times Rich List.