Many rich people got a little less rich in the past year. There is no reason for sympathy, but the current World Wealth Report by the consulting firm Capgemini shows that the world’s millionaires also lost fortunes in 2022 due to the geopolitical and subsequent economic turbulence. “The number of wealthy private individuals worldwide fell by 3.3 percent to 21.7 million in 2022. The value of their assets fell by 3.6 percent to USD 83 trillion in the same period,” according to the annual results investigation carried out. It is the sharpest decline in ten years. In particular, the slump on the stock markets cost the super-rich a lot of money. Nevertheless, the comparatively small group has a lot of money. For comparison: worldwide gross domestic product was around 100 trillion dollars in 2022.
In Germany, the club of dollar millionaires shrank by 20,900 people from 2021 to 2022 to a good 1.6 million people. Their total assets fell by 2.2 percent to just over $ 6.1 trillion. A year earlier it had risen by 7.4 percent to around 6.3 trillion dollars. In Europe as a whole, the assets of dollar millionaires shrank by 3.2 percent year-on-year to $18.2 trillion, according to the calculations. The North America region recorded the strongest decline in assets, down 7.4 percent to $25.6 trillion.
According to the evaluation, Germany claims third place in the ranking of countries with the most dollar millionaires despite falling numbers: the USA is still at the top with a good 6.9 million people in this category, ahead of Japan with 3.55 million . China comes in fourth place with almost 1.5 million wealthy private individuals who are referred to in the study with the English technical term “High Net Worth Individuals”. In contrast to the leading developed countries, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East showed resilience and recorded financial growth in 2022, driven by strong developments in the oil and gas sector.
German millionaires lost billions on the stock exchange
“High Net Worth Individuals” are defined as individuals with investable assets of $1 million or more. Capgemini considers ownership of stocks, fixed-income securities, alternative investments such as private equity, cash, and real estate where it is not used. Collectibles and consumables and durables are not included. The 2023 World Wealth Report covers 71 markets, accounting for more than 98 percent of global gross national income and 99 percent of global market capitalization. As part of the study, 3171 wealthy people were interviewed.
The Capgemini report is largely consistent with other surveys. The insurer Allianz, which publishes an annual study on the development of global financial assets, predicted the trend reversal for 2022 as early as October: After significant growth of more than ten percent in the three previous years, 2022 was inclusive due to the consequences of the Ukraine war inflation and tightening of monetary policy, a decline in global financial assets of more than two percent is to be expected – the first significant loss of assets since the financial crisis of 2008.
With regard to Germany, the Bundesbank came to the conclusion for 2022 that people in this country lost billions in total as a result of price falls on the stock exchanges last year. According to calculations by the Bundesbank, the assets of private households in the form of cash, securities, bank deposits and claims against insurance companies were around 7,254 billion euros at the end of the year, well below the record figure of 7,624 billion euros at the end of 2021.