Gulf high on global rich list

Dubai: Three of world's six nations with highest  proportion of millionaires were in the Gulf.

Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE were in the fourth, fifth and sixth spots, the Boston Consulting Group's Global Wealth report said.

Singapore led the league table for the highest proportion of millionaire households at 11.4 per cent.

It was followed by Hong Kong and Switzerland.

The US had the seventh-highest density of millionaires at 4.1 per cent.

Global wealth staged a "remarkable" comeback in 2009, increasing by 11.5 per cent to $111.5 trillion, just short of the year-end peak set in 2007, according to the consulting group.

"There's no doubt that wealth will continue to grow faster in emerging markets, fuelled by strong economic growth," said Tjun Tang, a BCG partner and report co-author.

"We expect Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, to grow at nearly twice the global rate, raising its share of global wealth from 15 per cent in 2009 to almost 20 per cent in 2014."

The consultancy predicted global wealth would grow at an average annual rate of nearly six per cent from year-end 2009 through 2014.

This was slower than the 2009 recovery but still higher than the 4.8 per cent annual growth rate from year-end 2004 through 2009.

But the rebound in wealth "should not be seen as a return to business as usual", the company's report cautioned.

"Client trust and wealth manager performance are still lower than they were before the global economic crisis," the report said.

Where the millionaires reside