The Rich Got a Bit Poorer Last Year

The wealthy took a big hit last year.

The global population of billionaires sank for the first time since 2018, dropping 3.5% to 3,194, while their wealth declined by 5.5% to US$11 trillion, London-based Altrata, a data firm focused on the rich, reported in its annual Billionaire Census earlier this week.

The drop in wealth was the second-largest fall in the last decade, although Altrata noted that it only partially offset a double-digit jump in billionaire wealth in 2021. The company’s report draws from data collected by its Wealth-X unit.

Zooming out, the global population of those with US$1 million or more in assets fell by 3.3% to 21.7 million individuals, while their wealth sank by 3.6% to US$83 trillion, Paris-based Capgemini, an information technology and services consulting company, said in its annual World Wealth Report released on Thursday. The drops are the biggest in 10 years, Capgemini said.

The population of the ultra-rich, those with at least US$30 million in assets, fell the most, sinking 4.6% last year after a 9.6% surge in 2021, the company said. The wealth of this group of 210,000 individuals fell by 3.7% last year.

Altrata noted that billionaires represent just 0.8% of those with at least $30 million or more in net worth, yet they have a 24% share of this group’s total wealth.

Both Altrata and Capgemini credit slumping economies, falling stock markets, rising interest rates, and geopolitical tensions as contributing to the declines. The reports also both noted that many of the world’s richest responded by turning to wealth preservation strategies.

Among billionaires, this had mixed results, Altrata said. Those who made their money in technology, healthcare, and real estate lost more than 5% of their wealth last year, while those whose wealth accumulated through aerospace and defense, construction and engineering, and food and beverage, saw their fortunes rise, the company said.

According to Capgemini, two-thirds of those with US$1 million or more turned to wealth preservation by cutting their stock holdings by nearly six percentage points to 23% of their total portfolios and boosting their cash and cash-equivalent holdings by almost 10 percentage points to 34% as of January this year.

While global and domestic economies, capital markets, and currency movements affect all the rich, Altrata noted that gains or losses are also due to individual strategies for business and investments, wealth planning, taxes, and philanthropy.

“No billionaire’s asset structure is the same as another’s, and the impact on their wealth will be different for each person,” the report said.

The Billionaire Census also reported that the richest of all, those with US$50 billion or more, lost 23.2% of their wealth, while those at the bottom of the pyramid, with US$1 billion to US$2 billion in assets (representing just over half of all billionaires), lost 3.2%.

Most billionaires, 955, live in the U.S., although the population dropped by 2.1% last year. There are 357 billionaires in China, down by 10.8% and 173 in Germany, down by 1.7%. The only population gains reported last year were in Singapore, which now has 54 billionaires, up by four; and in Moscow, which has 76 billionaires, up by one.

The average age of the world’s billionaires is 67, with those under 50 accounting for just 10% of the total, Altrata said. There are more female billionaires under 50 than over, although they comprise just under one-fifth of the under-50 group.

While the population of rich individuals, and their total wealth, dropped in Europe, Asia Pacific, and North America last year, both the population of the rich and their wealth rose in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, Capgemini said.

The number of rich in Latin America rose by 4.7% as their wealth increased by 2.1%; Africa’s rich gained 4.3% new members who combined wealth increased by 1.6%, while the Middle East’s rich gained 2.8% new members as their wealth rose by 1.5%, Capgemini said.

As the war against Hamas dragged into 2024, there were worries here that investment would dry up in Israel’s globally important technology sector, as much of the world became angry against the casualties in Gaza and recoiled at the unstable security situation.

In fact, a new survey found investment into Israeli technology startups grew 28% last year to $10.6 billion. The influx buoyed Israel’s economy and helped it maintain a war footing on several battlefronts.

The increase marks a turnaround for Israeli startups, which had experienced a decline in investments in 2023 to $8.3 billion, a drop blamed in part on an effort to overhaul the country’s judicial system and the initial shock of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

Tech investment in Israel remains depressed from years past. It is still just a third of the almost $30 billion in private investments raised in 2021, a peak after which Israel followed the U.S. into a funding market downturn.

Any increase in Israeli technology investment defied expectations though. The sector is responsible for 20% of Israel’s gross domestic product and about 10% of employment. It contributed directly to 2.2% of GDP growth in the first three quarters of the year, according to Startup Nation Central—without which Israel would have been on a negative growth trend, it said.

“If you asked me a year before if I expected those numbers, I wouldn’t have,” said Avi Hasson, head of Startup Nation Central, the Tel Aviv-based nonprofit that tracks tech investments and released the investment survey.

Israel’s tech sector is among the world’s largest technology hubs, especially for startups. It has remained one of the most stable parts of the Israeli economy during the 15-month long war, which has taxed the economy and slashed expectations for growth to a mere 0.5% in 2024.

Industry investors and analysts say the war stifled what could have been even stronger growth. The survey didn’t break out how much of 2024’s investment came from foreign sources and local funders.

“We have an extremely innovative and dynamic high tech sector which is still holding on,” said Karnit Flug, a former governor of the Bank of Israel and now a senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank. “It has recovered somewhat since the start of the war, but not as much as one would hope.”

At the war’s outset, tens of thousands of Israel’s nearly 400,000 tech employees were called into reserve service and companies scrambled to realign operations as rockets from Gaza and Lebanon pounded the country. Even as operations normalized, foreign airlines overwhelmingly cut service to Israel, spooking investors and making it harder for Israelis to reach their customers abroad.

An explosion in negative global sentiment toward Israel introduced a new form of risk in doing business with Israeli companies. Global ratings firms lowered Israel’s credit rating over uncertainty caused by the war.

Israel’s government flooded money into the economy to stabilize it shortly after war broke out in October 2023. That expansionary fiscal policy, economists say, stemmed what was an initial economic contraction in the war’s first quarter and helped Israel regain its footing, but is now resulting in expected tax increases to foot the bill.

The 2024 boost was led by investments into Israeli cybersecurity companies, which captured about 40% of all private capital raised, despite representing only 7% of Israeli tech companies. Many of Israel’s tech workers have served in advanced military-technology units, where they can gain experience building products. Israeli tech products are sometimes tested on the battlefield. These factors have led to its cybersecurity companies being dominant in the global market, industry experts said.

The number of Israeli defense-tech companies active throughout 2024 doubled, although they contributed to a much smaller percentage of the overall growth in investments. This included some startups which pivoted to the area amid a surge in global demand spurred by the war in Ukraine and at home in Israel. Funding raised by Israeli defense-tech companies grew to $165 million in 2024, from $19 million the previous year.

“The fact that things are literally battlefield proven, and both the understanding of the customer as well as the ability to put it into use and to accelerate the progress of those technologies, is something that is unique to Israel,” said Hasson.

The Rich Got a Bit Poorer Last Year

The 28% increase buoyed the country as it battled on several fronts but investment remains down from 2021