How many times have we heard that with Covid the rich have become even richer and everyone else has fallen even further behind? Well, that's right. It's not just a sensation dictated by some scattered evidence, it's really written in black and white. The 25th edition of Capgemini's World Wealth Report leaves no room for doubt: in 2020, the global population of High Net Worth Individuals (acronym HNWI, i.e. those with personal assets of at least $1 million excluding the value of the house in which they live , collectibles and consumer goods) increased by 6,3%. Today the "rich" in the world are more than 20 million. Many, but if you think about it, very few compared to the world population, which gives an idea of how much wealth is concentrated in the pockets of a very small minority.
But above all, the assets of these people grew by 7,6% with the pandemic: in total, the jackpot brings them closer 80.000 billions of dollars. Even better did the ultra-rich, i.e. the ultra-HNWI, i.e. those people who exceed not one million but 30 million dollars of individual assets: they increased by almost 10% and at the same rate their wealth, by 9,1 %. The novelty is that for the first time since 2014, the western world has taken back the primacy, if one can speak of primacy in such a niche analysis with respect to everyone's life. The North America to be precise, therefore in particular the United States, is once again the area of the planet with the most super rich: there are almost 7 million (+10,7%) and they are also in first place for assets held with 24.320 billion dollars ( +12%). Overtaking therefore consumed on theAsia-Pacific (read China), where HNWIs are 6,9 million and have grown "only" by 5,8%. Their total assets are $24.000 trillion.
According to Capgemini, the trend reversal is due to share price increases but also to the stimuli introduced by new president Joe Biden: in theory they had the aim of saving the middle class from the pandemic crisis and helping the weaker classes, but in fact the avalanche of public money introduced into the economy is favoring for now especially those who already had much earlier. Also in Europe in any case, the richest cannot complain: after the setback of 2018, assets have grown again in 2020 and indeed it exceeded 17.000 billion for the first time, reaching 17,46 trillion. There are 5,3 million people who have this money in their bank account (or who knows where).
Wealth is even more concentrated in the Middle East, where 810.000 people share 3.170 billion of assets. But it's still nothing compared to the South America, the continent where inequalities are most extreme of all: even the super rich have decreased by 4% to 600.000 people, with their total wealth however consolidated (+0,5%) and which is close to 8.900 billion. In Italy according to the research, we have 300 individuals with spendable wealth of more than a million dollars, +9.2% compared to 2019. Unlike the United States, however, it was not so much the Stock Exchange that pushed the wealth of our Scrooges (indeed the market capitalization of Piazza Affari decreased by 6,4%) since the real estate boom driven during Covid by the desire to live in larger homes and with an average increase in values of 5,2%.
The only small consolation to so much inequality is that the investments of these millionaires are increasingly heading in the right direction: sustainable investing is on the rise, with 43% of ultra-HNWIs willing to apply for an ESG score for the products they offer.
