As many as 213 Chinese tycoons have lost their dollar billionaire status after poor market performance and the effect of the trade tensions with the US last year.
Hurun, a China-based research platform, said markets and currency were to blame. “A 23% drop in the Chinese stock markets coupled with a 6% drop in the Chinese yuan were the main causes of the dropoffs in China”, Hurun’s chairman and chief researcher, Rupert Hoogewerf, said.
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A fall in manufacturing wiped out the most wealth, the Hurun’s report found, showing the effects that trade tensions are having on the pockets of the wealthy. Retail and real estate also suffered.
Billionaires are $1 trillion poorer
Globally, Hurun estimates the world’s billionaires are a collective $1 trillion poorer and 430 people have lost their billionaires status.
That means there are now 2,470 known billionaires in the world, down from 224 last year. This is larger than other estimates. UBS estimated there were 2,158 billionaires in the world in 2017. Last year Forbes reported a record 2,208 billionaires.
Hurun, which specalises on Chinese and Indian wealth, finds more billionaires in China than anywhere else in the world. With 584 billionaires, China has 74 more than the US. Beijing has 11 more than New York.
India is in fifth place after the UK and Germany. It has a total of 104 billionaires though has lost 28 in the past year.
However, both Forbes and UBS say the US is still home to more billionaires than any other country.
As China’s billionaires have already felt the effects of trade tensions in their own businesses and the marketplace, the future of their wealth – and their world ranking – is uncertain.
