Billionaire wealth grows to record levels during pandemic, breaking past the $10-trillion mark

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ZURICH — Billionaire wealth reached record high levels amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a report by UBS and PwC found, as a rally in stock prices and gains in technology and health care helped the wealth of the world’s richest break the US$10 trillion mark.

The report, covering over 2,000 billionaires representing some 98 per cent of the cohort’s total wealth, found billionaire wealth grew by more than a quarter during the early months of the pandemic to reach US$10.2 trillion in July, breaking the previous record of US$8.9 trillion at the end of 2019.

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The figure represents a five- to ten-fold rise over the past 25 years, the span covered by the UBS and PwC database, when billionaire wealth stood at just over US$1 trillion.

Between April 7 and July 31 this year, billionaires across every industry covered by the study saw their wealth rise by double digits, with billionaires in the technology, healthcare and industrial sectors leading the pack with 36 per cent-44 per cent gains.

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The pandemic accelerated a trend of technology and health-care entrepreneurs, and other business innovators, pulling ahead of their ultra-rich peers.

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From 2018 through July 2020, tech billionaires saw their wealth rise 42.5 per cent to US$1.8 trillion, the report found, while billionaires deriving their fortune from health care similarly saw their wealth rise 50.3 per cent during the period to US$658.6 billion.

Just over 200 of those billionaires publicly committed some US$7.2 billion to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, the study found, noting that billionaire donations to combat the medical crisis as well as the societal and economic turmoil it caused were likely actually higher.

? Thomson Reuters 2020