Four from GCC rank in rich club
Led by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, four GCC billionaires, including two from the UAE, Majid Al Futtaim and Hussain Sajwani figure in the list of the world’s 500 richest people.
dubai — Led by Saudi tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, four GCC billionaires, including two from the UAE, figure in the list of the world’s 500 richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Super rich individuals among the world’s top 10 include Bill Gates ($86 billion), Jeff Bezos ($83.5 billion), Warren Buffet ($81.2 billion), Amancio Ortega ($77.3 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($72.4 billion), Carlos Slim ($62.3 billion), Bernard Arnault ($57.2 billion), Larry Ellison ($54.7 billion), Larry Page ($49.3 billion) and Sergey Brin ($48 billion).
Prince Alwaleed was ranked 51st in the Bloomberg list with his wealth estimated at $18.8 billion.
From the UAE, Majid Al Futtaim ranked 204th ($7.76 billion) and Hussain Sajwani ranked 291st ($5.82 billion) in the Bloomberg list. Sultan Al Kabeer from Saudi Arabia is the fourth billionaire in the list, ranked 402nd ($4.7 billion).
The world’s super rich have added $824 billion so far this year. Total billionaire wealth increased 17 per cent to $6 trillion in 2016, after a decline the previous year, UBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report issued on Thursday.
Much of that growth came in China and India, the source of three-quarters of the world’s new billionaires. The report said Asia now has the most billionaires in the world, surpassing the US for the first time with a new billionaire minted on average every other day in 2016.
If growth continues at this pace, the total wealth of Asian billionaires, which currently stands at $2 trillion, will surpass that of US billionaires in four years, the report pointed out.
Asia saw 117 people break the billion-dollar mark in 2016, bringing the most populous continent’s total to 637. But America’s 563 billionaires still control more total assets at $2.8 trillion.
Europe had only three new billionaires in 2016, with its total at 342, according to the report, which tallied data on 1,550 billionaires around the world.
China has the highest number of new billionaires with 101 people joining the ranks in 2016. In Europe, the number of billionaires held roughly steady. The gain in total billionaire wealth was twice the 8.5 per cent increase of the MSCI AC World Index.
“A combination of geopolitical stability in Greater China, rising Chinese real estate prices, infrastructure spending, the growing middle class and buoyant commodity prices all joined together to boost wealth,” the PwC report said, citing interviews with Asia’s richest people. The Chinese housing market, in particular, gave billionaires a boost from both their personal investments in luxury homes and in the values of commercial investments.
— issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com