Membership swells in wealthiest-people club

Associated Press

NEW YORK — The rich got richer in most parts of the world last year.

A study released yesterday found that nearly 7.2 million people around the globe in 2000 had at least $1 million in investable assets, an increase of 180,000 from 1999.

Their total wealth was estimated at $27 trillion, up 6 percent from $25.5 trillion the previous year.

The growth in both the number of wealthy and their holdings would have been even greater had stock markets around the world not fallen substantially after the first quarter, the study said. In 1999, when the stock market rose strongly, the assets of the world's wealthiest individuals grew 18 percent.

The only two regions that didn't join in the wealth-building boom last year were Africa, where commodity prices have been depressed, and Asia, where performance was dampened by weak economic growth in Japan, the report said.

The annual study, the fifth in a series, was prepared by the Merrill Lynch & Co. brokerage and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young consultants.

The world's wealthiest people represent just a tiny fraction of the world's 6.1 billion population. But their ranks are monitored closely by Merrill Lynch and other companies that provide investment and private banking services.

The Merrill Lynch-Cap Gemini survey looks at the wealth of people it calls "high net-worth individuals," who have cash, stocks and other assets worth at least $1 million. Most are beyond what people think of as "millionaires" since the wealth figure doesn't include their real estate holdings and other nonliquid assets.

According to the latest study, the strongest growth in wealth was in the oil-rich Middle East, where the holdings of some 220,000 high net-worth individuals rose 18 percent to $1.3 trillion.

Europe saw the biggest jump in wealthy people. The total there rose 6 percent to 2.3 million and their combined holdings rose 7.5 percent to $7.2 trillion, the study showed.

The study gave these figures for other regions:

• United States and Canada. The number of high net-worth individuals rose 2.4 percent to 2.54 million, and their wealth increased 9 percent to $8.8 trillion.

• Latin America, including Mexico. The number of wealthy individuals was unchanged at 190,000, but their holdings increased 6.5 percent to $3.3 trillion.

• Asia. The number of wealthy people fell about 0.6 percent to 1.7 million, and their assets dropped 9 percent to $4.9 trillion.

• Africa. The number of high net-worth individuals was unchanged at 40,000, and their wealth was unchanged at about $500 billion.

Some 80,000 people made it into the ranks of the wealthiest with the stock-market boom in the first quarter of 2000, but fell below the $1 million threshold as the markets declined, the report said.