10 May 2014

London, where the streets are paved with gold

This year’s Sunday Times Super-Rich list reveals that London has a higher concentration of billionaires than any other city in the world. But which cities hold the other billionaires?

London boasts more billionaires than any other city, according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.

The capital is home to 72 people whose aggregated family wealth tops £1bn. The next most prosperous world city is Moscow, which boasts 48 billionaires, just ahead of US cities New York and San Francisco.

The compilers of the list calculate that UK billionaires own £301bn between them, compared to £245bn last year and just over £65bn in 2004.

For the first time this year, the super-rich need a net worth of £1bn to make it into the Rich List top 100.

Of all the G8 countries, the United States boasts the most sterling billionaires (307), but the UK has the most per head of population, with about one billionaire for every 600,000 people.

In the US about one person in every million is a billionaire, and in Russia the ration rises to one in every 2.5 million people.