“Riding the storm”. Ride the storm. This is, not surprisingly, the title of the annual study Billionaires Insights 2020, which reveals to us a phenomenon already abundantly observed by other rankings during this year: Covid has caused an almost unprecedented economic crisis, but at the same time it has increased the fortunes of the ultra-rich. The study draws on the vast network of clients and data available to UBS and PwC, with the aim of offering detailed information on billionaires from all over the world: it turns out that between April and July, therefore more or less in the height of the emergency and the economic crisis, the overall fortune of the world's billionaires has increased by more than 25% to $10.200 trillion, breaking the previous record of $8.900 trillion, set in 2017.
The very number of millionaires has increased: although they remain a very narrow elite compared to the world's population, there are now 2.189 ultra-rich individuals, thirty more than three years ago. According to Josef Stadler of UBS we have practically gone back a century, to 1905, when much of the world's fortune was in the hands of very few people: at the time it was the great dynasties like the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, today it is still the great American entrepreneurs (they occupy more than half of Billionaire Insight and also represent more than half of the total fortune) but are pressed by their Chinese colleagues. The study in question does not make any rankings, but it is no mystery that the richest man on the planet is Jeff Bezos, whose assets have increased frighteningly during Covid, thanks to the golden business achieved by Amazon's e-commerce .
However, the disruptive force of the crisis has also set virtuous mechanisms in motion. And 209 billion, among the most important in the world, are also those who, between March and June 2020, made available 7,2 billion in resources for communities, at the level of pure philanthropy, precisely to relieve the less wealthy from the major difficulties encountered on the economic, health and social level. The level of philanthropic giving this year has reached its highest level in history, says Billionaires Insight.
I am of course the most innovative sectors – from tech to the healthcare-pharmaceutical sector to industry – which drive the recovery and drive the world economy towards new models. And this is where the greatest returns are obtained. Scientists, programmers and engineers are revolutionizing the industry and by applying emerging technologies to drive change, some of them are becoming the new billionaires.
It's Italy? This paradigm is also valid in Italy: total wealth in Italy decreased by 12% in 2019, to 125,6 billion dollars, but in the months between April and July 2020, wealth increased again by 31%, to 165,0 billion dollars. At the end of July 2020 the number of Italian billionaires increased to 40 (compared to 36 last year), of which 67% are men and the remaining 33% women. But despite this increase, in the last 5 years the growth rate of Italian billionaires is negative (in 2015 there were 43). At the end of July 2020, "self-made" billionaires represent 49% of the total number of Italian billionaires. Between 2019 and 2020, the growing billionaire Italian companies were those operating in the Consumer & Retail, Industrial and Financial Services sectors.
