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India’s shrinking rich list

Omar1984

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India’s shrinking rich list

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Another sign of India’s economic malaise: according to the latest wealth report from Capgemini and RBC, India was the only one of the Bric countries to have fewer dollar millionaires in 2011 than in 2010.

The world’s population of rich people stayed roughly equal at 11m in 2011, according to the report published on Tuesday. But those people’s aggregate investable wealth by asset value slid 1.7 per cent to $42tn.

A rich person – or high net worth individual in the jargon, or even HNWI – is defined by Capgemini as somebody with $1m or more in investable assets excluding primary residence, collectables, consumables and consumer durables (so blow your pile stocking the cellar and you’re off the list).

The main reason for the fall in aggregate wealth was a “disproportionate impact of losses among higher wealth brackets”, where investors are often more likely to invest in less liquid and more risky assets.

Indian millionaires know what the authors are talking about: no less than 18 per cent of the country’s 2010 dollar millionaires lost that status in 2011. That must really grate, especially knowing that the other Brics have weathered the economic storm rather better than other parts of the world (see chart).

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Source: RBC / Capgemini

Capgemini puts the blame on the poor performance of Indian equities, in which many rich Indians like to invest:

Equity-market capitalization plunged in India in 2011, wiping out asset values and levels of investable wealth.

But India’s rich aren’t the only Bric millionaires to be hurting. Despite the overall growth in China, Hong Kong’s millionaires lived through a similar experience:

A similar stock-market decline in Hong Kong (where HNWIs are traditionally highly exposed to equities) helped to reduce that HNWI population by 17.4%

But the broader picture for the wealthy in Brazil, China and Russia was a lot brighter. With a 6.2 per cent increase, Brazil had the highest rise in HNWIs, to a total of 165,000 dollar millionaires. China’s did nicely too, up 5.2 per cent to more than 560,000. Russia had a more modest gain, of 2 per cent.

With or without India, the Bric millionaires’ club has a long way to go before it reaches the success of its DM equivalent: the US, Japan and Germany together still account for more than half of the world’s millionaires.

But that should be the least of India’s worries. And who knows? With so many of their friends feeling the squeeze, India’s policy makers might even be encouraged to turn their attention to the problem of declining GDP growth.

India’s shrinking rich list | beyondbrics

Another source:

India sees maximum fall in number of rich in 2011


India sees maximum fall in number of rich in 2011
 

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