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Beijing overtakes New York as world's billionaire capital

Beijing overtakes New York as world's billionaire capital

China

Beijing has overtaken New York City as the city with the highest number of billionaires for the first time.

The Chinese capital took the position from the Big Apple after adding 32 new billionaires to its list, bringing it to 100, Shanghai firm, Hurun announced.

According to Hurun, New York City has only 95 billionaires.

Shanghai, China’s centre of commerce came in fifth place.

Hurun tracks wealth and luxury in China and has released a Global Rich List for the past five years measuring billionaires wealth in US dollars.

Hurun founder, Rupert Hoogewerf, attributed China’s explosive wealth creation to Chinese market regulations which allowed a flood of new initial public offerings (IPOs) after holding back new IPOs for several years.

“What we showed today is that at the super-wealth creation level, the Chinese are now leading,” he said.

He said his wealth calculations were made using stock prices as of January 15, meaning taking into account the Chinese market’s 40 per cent tumble over the past half year.

“Despite its own slowdown and falling stock markets, China minted more new billionaires than any other country in the world last year, mainly on the back of new [share] listings,” he said.

Beijing welcomed 32 new billionaires last year to overtake New York with four new billionaires.

Overall, China has overtaken the US as the country with the highest number of billionaires.

From the new list, five of the top 10 cities with billionaires were in China. Moscow came in third with 66 billionaires followed by Hong Kong and Shanghai with 64 and 50 millionaires respectively.

Chinese billionaires in the global top 100 included Jack Ma, Alibaba founder, Zong Qinghou, beverage magnate, and the tech bosses at phone maker Xiaomi, social media firm Tencent and Baidu, the search engine.

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