The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked misery and economic damage around the world but it has also been a boon for the rich with an estimated 5.2m people becoming dollar millionaires last year while the number of those worth at least $50m increased by almost a quarter.
A Credit Suisse report found that aggregate global wealth accumulated by households rose by about $28.7tn in 2020 as central banks flooded financial markets with cheap money, inflating asset prices.
Higher equity and residential property valuations lifted aggregate household net worth — assets, including property, minus debts — to about $418.3tn. The increase was equivalent to a 4.1 per cent rise on a constant currency basis — only slightly below the annual average of the past two decades even as global economies struggled with the health crisis and lockdown restrictions.