Wealth Flies The Flag In China, India

The Age

Friday September 26, 2008

Vanessa O'Shaughnessy, Investment Reporter

INDIA and China are churning out more and more millionaires - and multimillionaires - as their economies speed ahead.

The number of Indians with more than $US1 million, excluding the family home, rose by 22.7% in 2007. China had the second-fastest-growing population of rich individuals, up 20.3% over the year.

Between the two countries, there were 538,000 millionaires, with 26.9% of the personal wealth in the region.

And across the Asia Pacific, the number of people with more than $US30 million in personal wealth jumped by 16.4%, to 20,400 people. Almost 30% were in China and another 5.3% were in India - just behind Australia on 6%.

According to the 2008 Asia-Pacific Wealth Report, released by Merrill Lynch and IT services and business consultancy company Capgemini yesterday, high net worth individuals in the Asia-Pacific region were expected to have accumulated more wealth than their European counterparts by 2012.

"Asia Pacific is the engine of wealth creation," said Capgemini senior manager financial services Wayne Li, acknowledging the power shift that may occur.

In Australia, the number of wealthy individuals rose by 7.1% in 2007, despite the challenging conditions in global markets. About 1% of the population, or 172,000 people, are considered "high net worth".

"Historically, global conditions impact the Australian economy with a six to nine-month lag," the report found. "Consequently, strong performances prevailed through year-end and boosted Australian ... gains above the global average, but short of the Asia-Pacific rate."

However, a report released by the Boston Consulting Group this week found the number of Australians with more than $US1 million "assets under management" had risen to 190,000 in 2007.

Merrill Lynch, in conjunction with Capgemini, has produced the World Wealth Report for 12years, and the Asia-Pacific Wealth Report for three years.

But the US investment bank last week sold itself to Bank of America in an effort to survive turbulent financial markets.

Mr Li said he was unable to comment on the future of the report.

© 2008 The Age

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