How the world’s billionaires get richer
Find out where the ultra wealthy put their money
One of the many reasons why the ultra-wealthy are getting richer every year is that they know exactly where to put their money.
The world’s richest, about 1 per cent of the world’s population, have accumulated so much money that their combined cash and assets now represent 48 per cent of the global wealth. Analysts say that, by 2016, the small wealthy elite will make more millions, which when combined, will be equivalent to more than half of everyone’s money and assets put together.
It’s not that the remaining 52 per cent of the global wealth is distributed among the average-income earning citizens. According to Oxfam, almost all of the remaining 52 per cent of global wealth are in the coffers of the rest of the richest people in the world, which is just about 20 per cent of the population.
The rest of the majority, about 80 per cent of the population, own only 5.5 per cent of the world’s wealth. Their average wealth? It’s $3,851 (Dh14,000) per adult, which is 1/700th of the average wealth of the 1 per cent.
Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, says the scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite calls for eradicating poverty, the gap between the rich and the poor just keeps getting wider each year.
Oxfam’s research paper sheds light on how the super rich invest their money. According to Oxfam, "there are a few important economic sectors that have contributed to the accumulation of wealth of these billionaires."
• They invest in the financial sector
According to the report, a good number of the richest billionaires like Warren Buffett, George Soros or Michael Bloomberg have invested their money in the financial and insurance sectors and seen their accumulated wealth grow by 15 per cent in a single year, from $1 trillion to $1.6 trillion.
Last March 2014, 321 of these billionaires (20 per cent) were listed as having a portion of their fortunes invested in the financial and insurance sectors.
• They have interests in pharmaceuticals, healthcare business
The other billionaires, including Ludwig Merckle from Germany and Dilip Shanghvi from India have interests in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors and saw their collective net worth grow by 47 per cent. Merckle alone saw his wealth increasing immensely in one year by 21 per cent, from $7.1 billion in 2013 to $8.6 billion last year.
