In a world in which more and more people find it impossible, what do I know, to acquire a home, there are nevertheless those who live even more comfortably, perhaps thanks to the former. Billionaires are in luck. There are more and more, according to the latest report. If in Spain there were 27 billionaires in 2024 (that is, people with assets exceeding $1 billion), now there are already 32. Together, they manage a wealth of about $213 billion, of course, a large part belongs to just one person. Yes, Amancio Ortega. The owner of Zara has 21,000 million more than last year. He manages, in total, 124,000 million, 58.2% of the total multi-million dollar wealth.
But there are those who are really lucky, they are the heirs of all these billionaires. In fact, according to the Swiss bank report, 91 people became billionaires by inheritance this year; $297.8 billion passed from parents to children. And things are not going to change. UBS estimates that in the next fifteen years around $5.9 trillion (difficult to even understand) will be inherited by the children of today’s billionaires.
Of course, according to the report, which carried out a survey of 87 billionaire clients of the bank, these rich people do not, very rich, “expect their children to succeed independently despite the influence of inheritance.” “More than eight in ten of the billionaires with children surveyed want their children to follow their own path, stating that they aspire to develop the skills and values necessary to succeed independently, rather than relying solely on inheritance,” reports UBS. Of course, those almost six billion dollars help.
In addition to inheritances, however, the report also speaks of 196 new ‘self-made’ billionaires. In this aspect, the Americans stand out above all. Of these 196 new billionaires, 92 are from the United States. People like Ben Lamm, co-founder of genetics and bioscience company Colossal; Michael Dorrell, co-founder and CEO of Stonepeak, an infrastructure investment firm; or Bob Pender and Mike Sabel, co-founders of Venture Global, an exporter of liquefied natural gas.
But if some names must be highlighted, these are the technological billionaires. And here we find, of course, the tycoon Elon Musk. Despite the aforementioned drop in Tesla shares, the South African’s wealth does not stop growing. Also that of the owners of Meta, Oracle or Nvidia. “The six American tech billionaires whose wealth increased the most became $171 billion richer between them compared to last year,” the report states. The increase, the Swiss bank notes, “is closely linked to the AI capabilities of its companies, from the manufacturing of fundamental chips to AI-powered cloud infrastructure.” The Chinese promoters of the DeepSake language model or founders of the electric vehicle company BYD also appear here.
If there are 8.3 billion people in the world and the number of billionaires has risen to 2,919, it could be said that these represent 0.00003516867%.
