The Athena Factor
Although the total wealth of billionaires has declined over the past year, the number of billionaires has increased significantly – particularly among women.
In the last five years, the number of female billionaires has grown by almost 50 percent, according to an analysis by UBS and PwC. Out of a total of 2,101 billion that existed worldwide at the end of 2018, 233 are women. That’s an additional 73 women who have achieved billionaire status since the end of 2013, the report reports. This corresponds to an increase of 46 percent. Josef Stadler of UBS Global Wealth Management and Marcel Tschanz of PwC Switzerland, both responsible for dealing with the super-rich in their company, call this the “Athena factor”. Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, courage and inspiration.
In comparison, the number of super-rich males grew by just 39 percent, for a total of 1,868 in the billionaire pool. Women owned total wealth of $871.2 billion in 2018, up 26 percent from 2013.
The sectors with the greatest potential for women
According to the study, advances in Asia have been the main driver of growth in the wealth of female billionaires. Well-known billionaires from China include Li Haiyan and Shu Ping, who became rich with the Haidilao restaurant chain. In addition, Anastasia Soare generated enormous sums of money with the beauty line Anastasia Beverly Hills and Tatyana Babakchuk as the founder of Russia’s largest online store Wildberries. The richest woman in the world is still Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, who owes her fortune of 49.3 billion US dollars to her grandfather’s inheritance. The L’Oral founder bequeathed his granddaughter an exorbitant sum, which catapulted her to number 15 in the Forbes ranking of the richest people in the world. According to the studies, these cases have become rarer, the majority of the nouveau riche are self-made billionaires.
The most popular industries for self-made billionaires are consumer and retail, according to UBS and PwC analysis.
Overall, the wealth of the super-rich is falling
Compared to the previous year, the global wealth of the billionaires in 2018 decreased by 4.3 percent to 8.5 trillion US dollars. According to the study, this can be explained by “the strong US dollar, trade tensions, fears of slower economic growth and volatility in the financial markets”. Josef Stadler of UBS Global Wealth Management added in the study: “The billionaire boom of the past five years has now undergone a natural correction. The strong dollar, combined with growing uncertainty in capital markets in a difficult geopolitical context, sets the stage for this decline created.” The Asian market accounted for a large share of the global decline in total billionaire wealth, with billionaire wealth in China falling 12.3 percent.
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