Billionaires’ children and spouses are inheriting more assets than ever in a “great wealth transfer” that is creating a growing class of super-rich who did not make their own fortunes, according to a UBS report.
Ninety-one people became billionaires through inheritance after receiving a combined $298 billion in the year to April, research by the Swiss bank found. Of those, 64 were male and 27 female.
The total value of wealth transfer through inheritance rose more than a third from the previous year and was more than in any previous 12-month period since reporting began in 2015.
Benjamin Cavalli, head of strategic clients at UBS Global Wealth Management, said: “These heirs are proof of a multi-year wealth transfer that’s intensifying.”
Billionaires’ children are expected to inherit at least $5.9 trillion over the next 15 years, UBS estimated.
The report is based on a survey of some of UBS’s high net worth clients and a database that tracks the wealth of billionaires across 47 markets in all the regions of the world.
The total number of billionaires has grown to 2,919, up from 2,682 a year ago, according to UBS. They control a total of $15.8 trillion, an increase from about $14 trillion a year earlier.
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The report comes as cash-strapped European governments consider ways to tax the rich more to help fund public services. In Switzerland, where $206 billion will be inherited over the next 15 years, according to the bank, voters on Sunday overwhelmingly rejected a 50 per cent proposed tax on inherited fortunes of $62 million or more after critics warned it could trigger an exodus of wealthy people.
Leading investors including Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, have warned that the artificial intelligence revolution will intensify the concentration of global wealth among a relatively small group of people unless there is a wealth “redistribution policy”. Billionaires in the technology sector saw their wealth increase by 23.8 per cent in the year, according to the bank.
The UBS report found that 196 self-made entrepreneurs became new billionaires in the year to April, with a combined wealth of $386.5 billion. Their wealth was derived from a variety of sectors including marketing software, genetics, restaurants, infrastructure and liquefied natural gas.
The tally of new self-made entrepreneurs was the second-highest on record, after 2021, when 360 self-made billionaires accounted for $782 billion. However, in that year wealth creation was attributed to asset price appreciation after the pandemic, instead of last year’s widespread business creation.
America led the way for new self-made billionaires, with 87 of the new crop domiciled in the US. They included Ben Lamm, co-founder of the genetics and bioscience company Colossal, Michael Dorrell, co-founder and chief executive of Stonepeak, an infrastructure investment firm, and Bob Pender and Mike Sabel, who co-founded Venture Global, an LNG exporter that listed on the New York Stock Exchange in January.
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The Trump administration is seeking to encourage billionaires to give away some of their wealth to American children via “Trump accounts”, invested in funds that track a US stock index. The children will not be able to withdraw funds until they are 18.
On Tuesday, Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies and the world’s 11th richest man, and his wife, Susan, announced that they will deposit $250 in the individual investment accounts of 25 million American children in a $6.25 billion philanthropic pledge.