Kuwait ranked first in the world with one billionaire for every 33,090 population, according to Global Finance, citing a report by the Ultrata Corporation, which monitors wealthy people, followed by San Francisco, with a billionaire for every 56,209 residents, and Hong Kong in third place with one billionaire per 59,516 inhabitants, reports Al-Rai daily. Based on its being an urban area (capital), Kuwait is considered the highest-ranked city in terms of billionaire density.
Ultrata revealed that the wealth of the world’s billionaires jumped in 2021 by 17.8 percent to a record $11.8 trillion, with an increase in the number of billionaires in the world by 3.3 percent to 3,311. The report pointed out that billionaires monopolize a high proportion of the volume of global wealth. Last year, they represented only 0.9 percent of the world’s high net worth, meaning those with a fortune of $30 million and above, but they monopolized 27.4 percent of the total wealth of that group.
The report listed the names of 15 countries in the world that contain more than 3 quarters of the world’s total billionaires and 81 percent of the total wealth of billionaires. The report showed that North America still ranks first in the world in terms of the number of billionaires, which in 2021 reached a total of 1,035, an increase of 5.6 percent from 2020. Europe witnessed the largest jump in the number of billionaires to 954, an increase of 6.8 percent from the previous year, while the number of billionaires in Asia rose 1.8 percent to 899 billionaires.
The report monitored the development of the wealth of the “super billionaires” in the world, and they are 20 super billionaires, each of whom has a fortune exceeding 50 billion dollars, revealing that among the top 5 industries in the world, the technology sector owned the youngest and most self-made billionaires, while industrial conglomerates owned the oldest and least self-made billionaires.
The report placed Saudi Arabia in the ninth place in terms of the number of billionaires, with an increase of 10.9 percent annually, with a total wealth of 192 billion dollars, an increase of 33 percent annually and the UAE ranked 15th with 45 billionaires, a decrease in their number by 10 percent, and with a total wealth of 181 billion dollars, an increase of 20 percent annually.
