The Brexit vote has wiped £26,000 off your wealth – and done away with 406,000 UK millionaires
The Brexit vote has wiped $1.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion) off the wealth of UK households this year, a report published today has suggested.
The Global Wealth Report, by the Credit Suisse Research Institute, found the wealth of each adult in the UK has fallen by $33,000, or £26,442, since the beginning of June. That puts the average wealth of UK adults at $289,000.
That's not all – the report suggested that, thanks to the vote, some 406,000 people are no longer millionaires in US dollar terms. Given figures earlier this year suggested the UK had 961,000 millionaires in the UK, that's a fall of almost half (although other figures have suggested the number of millionaires is increasing by a quarter every three years).
Europe hit hard
But even before the Brexit vote, things weren't looking good in Europe. According to the report, its total wealth has fallen 1.7 per cent between the middle of last year and the middle of this year – that's a fall of $1.3 trillion.
Emerging economies were worst hit, with wealth in Latin America falling 4.1 per cent (although the actual fall was much smaller – just $322bn) and African wealth falling five per cent, or $132bn.
Meanwhile, things were looking far more positive in Asia-Pacific and North America, where wealth rose 8.3 per cent and two per cent respectively. That's a rise of $4.1 trillion in Asia-Pacific and $1.8 trillion in North America.
Global wealth edged up 1.4 per cent, to $3.5 trillion, to $256 trillion, which Credit Suisse said was "very much in line with the increase in the world's population". That puts average wealth per adult at $52,800, about the same as last year.
Millions of millionaires
Although the UK's millionaires have been hit, that was more than made up for across the rest of the world. Globally, the number of millionaires rose 155 per cent.
What's interesting is that while 96 per cent of the 12.4m millionaires in the year 2000 were concentrated in high-income economies, about 13 per cent of the 20m new additions are in emerging economies.
The report added that the number of global millionaires will reach 45.1m by 2021, with the number of ultra-high net worth individuals (aka super rich people) could reach 208,000, from 141,000. Let's hope some of them are in the UK….