Europe more wealthy than North America, says report

A new report on global wealth management indicates that Europe has supplanted North America as the world’s richest region.

The Boston Consulting Group’s study found that global wealth dropped by 11.7 per cent due to the economic crisis, but the decline in net assets in North America was significantly greater than that of Europe.

According to the report, the value of assets under management in North America fell by 21.8 per cent to $29.3 trillion, while Europe registered a drop of 5.8 per cent.

That means that Europe now contains $32.7 trillion in assets under management, representing a quarter of the globe’s total wealth.

Boston Consulting Group also found that the number of millionaire households in the world decreased by 17.8 per cent to reach approximately nine million.

The report states that the value of assets under management of wealth management firms is not expected to return to the level seen in 2007 until 2013.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Boston Consulting’s Monish Kumar said: ’For the last few years the industry was blessed with very substantial growth, markets kept rising and people kept getting richer and pumping more money to wealth managers. That era came to a crashing halt in 2008.’
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