More billionaires walk the earth than ever before, their ranks surging 40 per cent in five years, new research shows.
The world's 2,100 billionaires saw their fortunes swell 34.5 per cent from 2013 to 2018, to US$8.5 trillion ($13.4t), according to UBS's 2019 Billionaire Insights report released Friday. But 2018 was actually a losing year for most of them, thanks to global trade friction and stock market volatility. The lost a combined US$388 billion ($611b).
Tech billionaires bucked that trend, growing their wealth by 3.4 per cent, or $1.3t, in 2018, according to the report. They've nearly doubled their ranks the past five years, from 76 to 148 in 2018,
"If tech billionaires' wealth were a country, it would rank second only to the US," the report said. "Looking back over five years, tech billionaires have driven almost a third of the growth in billionaire wealth. US tech billionaires accounted for more than half of that growth." UBS is one of the world's largest wealth managers with close to 1,000 billionaire clients.
But the burgeoning roster of the super-rich feeds into a wider debate about income inequality, which has become a signature issue for presidential hopefuls Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Sanders has gone so far as to say billionaires shouldn't even exist.