A massive transfer of wealth is gaining speed, as billionaires are increasingly padding their vast fortunes with inheritance rather than entrepreneurship, a study by Swiss banking giant UBS Group AG showed yesterday.
Over recent decades, the number of billionaires has ballooned, with surging entrepreneurial activity within tech and other areas ushering fresh members into the super-wealthy club.
However, in its ninth annual report on the world’s billionaires, UBS noted a significant shift in the way such fortunes are being made and expanded.
Photo: Reuters
“The heirs to billionaires are gaining prominence,” UBS Global Wealth Management head of strategic clients Benjamin Cavalli said in the foreword to the report.
“This year’s report found that the majority of billionaires that accumulated wealth last year did so through inheritance as opposed to entrepreneurship,” he said in a statement.
“This is a theme we expect to see more of over the next 20 years, as more than 1,000 billionaires pass an estimated US$5.2 trillion to their children,” he said.
That forecast was based on the estimated accumulated wealth of today’s billionaires who are over the age of 70, UBS said.
“After the surge in entrepreneurial activity witnessed over the past few decades, many business founders are now aging and passing their wealth to the next generation,” the study said.
The study showed 2,544 billionaires in the world by April this year, with their ranks swelling by 7 percent in the preceding year.
After seeing their combined fortunes shrink the previous year, billionaire wealth grew by 9 percent from April last year to April this year to US$12 trillion, it found.
The new billionaires included 53 heirs, whose accumulated inheritance amounted to US$150.8 billion, exceeding the US$140.7 billion joint fortunes of the 84 new self-made billionaires on the list, it said.
UBS attributed this shift in part to a subdued market for initial public offerings through last year and into this year, limiting the opportunities for entrepreneurs to monetize the values of their businesses.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
RSS