CORRECTED (OFFICIAL)-Billionaires' wealth falls for first time since 2015

"If tech billionaires' wealth were a country, it would rank second only to the United States", the report said.

Deepest banks alongside with the realm's finest wealth supervisor UBS like felt the implications of US-China swap tensions and world political uncertainties, as purchasers final year shied faraway from buying and selling and taking on debt in settle on of hoarding extra cash.

Billionaires' wealth fell by 4.3 per cent globally to $8.5 trillion United States a year ago, the joint UBS-PwC report found, with a sharp decline in China, including Hong Kong, and the Asia-Pacific region more broadly.

Notably, women made big strides, according to the report, which found that women became billionaires at a faster pace than men over the five years to the end of 2018.

After five years of steady growth from 2013 to 2018 when billionaire wealth grew by 34.5%, billionaire wealth dropped in 2018 by 4.3%.

The number of female billionaires has skyrocketed the past five years, climbing 46 percent to 233. Billionaires there lost 8% of their wealth compared to 2017.

"Billionaires should not exist", Sen.

Despite the dip in overall wealth, the report argued that billionaire businesses continue to thrive. Over the past five years, tech billionaires have driven almost a third of the growth in billionaire wealth.

Billionaire-run companies in the Asia Pacific region achieved returns of 18.4% per annum, just behind their counterparts from the Americas with 18.5% and ahead of those in the Europe, Middle East and Africa, which generated 16.9%.

China's richest dropped by 12.8%

"This report shows the resilience of the US economy", where there were 749 billionaires at the end of 2018, said John Matthews, head of private wealth management and ultra-high net worth business for UBS in the U.S.

Self-made billionaires are employing new techniques for global philanthropy, uniting with other billionaires, non-governmental organizations and charities, the report said. The decline bumped dozens from the billionaires list and contributed significantly to the global drop-off in billionaire fortunes. Warren this week released a billionaire calculator to help the ultrawealthy see how much they'd have left under her plan, which would impose an annual 2 percent tax on households with more than $50 million in assets and a 6 percent levy on fortunes in excess of $1 billion.

"To sum this up, you can say that rich people are less neurotic and less agreeable, but have a higher degree of conscientiousness, are more open to new experience, and more extroverted than the population as a whole", Zitelmann said.