Estate Planners Needed World-Wide

It seems that estate planners will be in growing demand world-wide as the number of “high net worth individuals” (that is, individuals with investable assets over $1,000,000, not including a residence) grew at a rate of 4.5% in 2007.

The following excerpts are from Daniel Thomas, World’s rich shrug off credit crunch, Financial Times, April 20, 2008:

There was particularly strong growth of wealthy populations in the emerging economies of China and India, as well as those countries that have access to ­natural resources such as Kazakhstan.

Countries such as Brazil, Canada, Australia and ­Russia also each added more than 8,500 wealthy residents in 2007 on the back of the commodity boom. * * *

The US is still home to most of the world’s truly rich. High net worth individuals make up 1 per cent of the US population, with 3.1m people claiming to be dollar millionaires, and 460 to be billionaires.

Japan claims the next highest population of the wealthy, with 765,000 dollar millionaires, and then the UK, where there are 557,000.

The UK has seen the biggest increase in billionaires, however. Numbers rose by 40 per cent in 2007, from 35 to 49. China’s high net worth population grew by 14 per cent in 2007, and now number 373,000, almost as many as in Germany.

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.