Spear’s, a “wealth management and luxury magazine”, has compiled a list of cities that have the most millionaires (in USD) per capita in conjunction with wealth consultancy company WealthInsight. They define millionaire as someone who has net assets of USD $1 million or above, excluding their primary residences (so they’ll count your summer castle in France, or your beach condo in Miami).
It should come as no surprise that seaside casino wonderland Monaco comes in at #1, with a staggering 3 in 10 Monacans having a net worth of at least USD $1 million. Zurich, the land of offshore bank accounts, comes in at a close second with 27.34%. It’s probably easier to “love thy neighbour” in those places if chances are that your neighbour owns a boat, a Ferrari, or both.
Geneva is third on the list, with 17.92% of their inhabitants having nice, deep wallets but from there on the percentages drop sharply on the list, with #4 New York having a mere 4.63% of their population being millionaires. Singapore, at #8, ranks higher than Hong Kong, where 2.58% of people are worth a million bucks or more.
Oliver Williams, an analyst for WealthInsight, said that “a ranking “like this is important” because “wealthy individuals, more than any other group, will change their home and even their domicile based on these factors”. Basically, rich people like to be around other rich people so when they pick a new city to live in they will try to make sure it has many other rich people in it.
Here’s Spear’s complete list of “Top 20 Global Cities by Millionaire Density” in case you were thinking of moving to a place with a lot more rich people if Hong Kong didn’t have enough rich people for you:
1. Monaco (29.21%)
2. Zurich (27.34%)
3. Geneva (17.92%)
4. New York (4.63%)
5. Frankfurt (3.88%)
6. London (3.39%)
7. Oslo (2.90%)
8. Singapore (2.80%)
9. Amsterdam (2.63%)
10. Florence (2.59%)
11. Hong Kong (2.58%)
12. Rome (2.54%)
13. Dublin (2.40%)
14. Doha (2.31%)
15. Toronto (2.29%)
16. Venice (2.25%)
17. Brussels (2.11%)
18. Houston (2.09%)
19. San Francisco (2.07%)
20. Paris (2.04%)
