According to a recent study by investment migration consultancy Henley & Partners, New York City has the most wealthy residents worldwide.
According to the research, the city is home to some 345,600 millionaires, 15,470 multi-millionaires with assets worth over $10 million, 737 centi-millionaires (with fortune of at least $100 million), and 59 billionaires, making it by a wide margin the wealthiest city in the world.
According to the study, 4% of New York's 8.38 million residents had investable assets, such as stocks, cash, or real estate, worth more than $1 million. When accounting for those with assets worth more than $10 million, the figure falls to 15,470.
According to research, New Yorkers have more private wealth than $3 trillion. Surprisingly, that exceeds the entire private wealth possessed by the majority of the major G-20 nations.
Tokyo, the capital of Japan, came in second with 304,900 affluent people. Much fewer of them have assets worth more than $10 million. According to the survey, there are 7,350 multimillionaires in Tokyo, 263 persons who have more than $100 million, and 12 billionaires.
With 276,400 wealthy people, 12,890 of whom are multimillionaires, the San Francisco Bay Area, home to Silicon Valley, rounds out the top three wealthiest cities. According to the research, the city is home to 62 billionaires and 623 people with assets worth at least $100 million.
Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston are the other U.S. cities in the top 10, ranking 6th, 7th, and 8th, respectively.
Additionally, these cities have become prime retirement destinations, Andrew Amoils, head of research at wealth intelligence firm New World Wealth, who collaborated on the report with Henley & Partners, told CNBC.
“Florida is an increasingly popular destination for retired high-net-worth individuals, especially those from the USA’s East Coast cities,” he said.
The top five cities with the fastest growing millionaire populations are not in the U.S., however.
Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Sharjah and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Lusaka in Zambia, and Luanda in Angola are in the lead. In the first half of 2022, they saw an increase of up to 20% in terms of their wealthy population.
The report links this to booming oil and gas industries, which have flourished as energy prices have soared and boosted stock markets in these areas.
Many major cities fell in the rankings or saw a significant reduction of ultra-wealthy people living there.
Of the top 10 cities with the largest number of wealthy people, seven saw a decline. Only the San Francisco Bay Area, Singapore and Houston saw growth. New York has already seen a 12% drop in wealthy individuals in 2022, while Los Angeles saw a 6% decline and Chicago’s proportion of ultra-wealthy citizens fell by 4%.
Another factor to consider is that overall wealth has declined in 2022, Amoils said in a paper released alongside the report.
“Worldwide high-net-worth individual numbers were down by 5% in the six-month period to June 2022. This drop was mainly due to the poor performance of major stock market indices,” he said.
This means that the drops in wealthy populations are not solely related to people moving to different cities – there are also simply fewer people who fall into the category.
France’s capital Paris fell by three places to 20th, meanwhile, as the city lost 12% of its rich people.
These are the 10 wealthiest cities in the world and the number of wealthy individuals who live in each of them according to Henley & Partners’ report.
- New York, U.S. (345,600)
- Tokyo, Japan (304,900)
- San Francisco Bay Area, U.S. (276,400)
- London, United Kingdom (272,400)
- Singapore, Singapore (249,800)
- Los Angeles, U.S. (192,400)
- Chicago, U.S. (160,100)
- Houston, U.S. (132,600)
- Beijing, China (131,500)
- Shanghai, China (130,100)