Super hot India, China make Asia wealthier than Europe

FP Editors • December 20, 2014, 03:55:43 IST

A decade ago, this would have been dismissed as something absurd. But today, things have changed and emerging nations are not just emerging, but have arrived. Their millionaires are giving the West a run for their money.

Super hot India, China make Asia wealthier than Europe

Asia’s growing global political clout is now extending to the sphere of wealth, too. The latest annual Merrill Lynch-Capgemini World Wealth Report bears this out. The findings of the study, which were released in Hong Kong on Thursday, show that the number of millionaires in Asia-Pacific has jumped sharply and overtaken Europe. The brighter spot is it has been projected to leave even the United States behind in this high-stake game in the next few years.

Super hot China and India are leading the pack, which have pushed the Asia-Pacific region’s millionaire ranks up by 10 percent to 3.3 million. This is a tad short of 3.4 million in North America and has a slight edge over Europe, which has 3.1 million.

Asia’s combined wealth , up 12 percent to $10.8 trillion last year, surpassed Europe and threatens to beat the United States and Canada, where wealth rose 9 percent to $11.6 trillion. “Their capital markets may be emerging, but their economies have clearly arrived,” John Thiel, head of Merrill’s private banking group and its “Thundering Herd” of 15,700 US brokers, told Reuters. “They’re not ’emerging’ anymore.”

Taking a global perspective, assets held by millionaires worldwide surged 9.7 percent to a record $42.7 trillion – breaching the previous high-water mark set in 2007 – while the ranks of people with at least $1 million of investable assets, excluding their primary residence, grew 8.3 percent to 10.9 million, the report found out. Manufacturing, exports and domestic growth are the stars as these were highly instrumental in creating legions of members for the millionaires’ club in Hong Kong, Singapore and India.

The findings got an echo in a PricewaterhouseCoopers report published on Monday, which found that Singapore and Hong Kong could beat London and Switzerland as the world’s top wealth management hub by 2013.

“ Asia-Pacific’s continued strong performance cements the region’s strategic importance to every wealth management firm with global aspirations,” said Michael Benz, Asia-Pacific head of Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management. “Now, the world’s second-biggest HNWI market in terms of population and wealth, it is more pertinent than ever for the wealth management industry to keep enhancing their service to this diverse region,” he added.