David Prosser: The world's rich just got a little bit poorer
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Outlook There are some striking numbers in the annual survey of the world's wealthiest people, published by Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini yesterday – not least that individuals with a high net worth lost more than a fifth of their wealth last year. However, what is also interesting is that the balance of global economic power is not changing as quickly as one might expect.
It is true, for example, that China's high-net-worth population has now overtaken that of Britain. But equally, the US, Japan and Germany still account for 54 per cent of the world's high-net-worth folk, which is actually a small increase on 2008.
Indeed, all four of the BRIC nations shared in the economic pain of last year, with the wealthy in Russia and India, in particular, suffering disproportionate losses. China moved up the league only because it lost less wealth than the UK, while Brazil suffered too, although it has also made gains.
Naturally, the wealthy want someone to blame for their woes, which explains another stand-out statistic in the report. Some 46 per cent of the rich say they have lost confidence in the people managing their wealth, while 25 per cent add that they have taken at least some of their money away from whoever was previously in charge of looking after it. That's an ongoing headache with which the world's largest fund managers must now grapple.
What is clear is that investment managers will not, for the foreseeable future at least, be given carte blanche to invest their clients' money at will. You can expect to see financial portfolios being moved about with much greater frequency, a new focus on the quality of risk management practices, and some searching questions about fees.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments