prospect research

One third of the new wealthiest are from Asia, according to Royal Bank of Canada research

A million more people joined the ranks of the global super-rich last year, almost a third of them in Asia, as soaring stock markets helped bolster the fortunes of wealthy investors.

The number of "high net worth individuals" climbed by 10% in 2012, taking the total worldwide to 12m, according to research by Royal Bank of Canada and consultancy Capgemini.

Between them, these twelve million people owned assets worth $46.2tn (£29.5tn) – more than three times the entire annual output from the US economy, and a 10% increase on 2011.

A high net worth individual is defined as anyone with $1m (£641,000) or more in "investable assets". The definition excludes the value of a main home and of any "consumer durables" such as cars.

World markets were volatile in the first half of 2012, as the eurozone crisis deepened; but after ECB president Mario Draghi promised to do "whatever it takes" to protect the single currency in July, and the Federal Reserve unleashed a drastic third round of quantitative easing in September, share prices recovered strongly, boosting the wealth of those with investments.

The findings are likely to increase concerns that the benefits of central banks' radical policies to rekindle economic growth have accrued overwhelmingly to those at the top of society, while unemployment remains stubbornly high in many countries and incomes have been under severe pressure.

Britain is home to the fifth-largest group of super-wealthy individuals, according to the report, with 465,000 super-rich individuals, up from 441,000 in 2011.

The wealth report came as the latest UK inflation figures showed that with the consumer price index running at 2.7% in May wages for average British workers have now failed to keep up with prices for more than three years.

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said, "economic stagnation has caused incomes to fall for most ordinary families but the wealth of the super-rich just keeps on growing. Unless this inequality is tackled Britain could experience a pretty joyless recovery, with the majority of the population seeing little or no benefit when economic growth returns."

The US regained its place at the top of the league table in the report, as the home to 3.73m high net worth individuals, up by more than 11.5% on 2011, as the recovering property market helped repair the damage to wealthy investors' housing portfolios inflicted by the downturn of the past five years.

The Asia-Pacific region was just behind the US, with a population of 3.68m super-rich investors – up by more than 9% on the year.

Europe, where the economy of the single currency zone has now been in recession for 18 months, was home to 3.4m high net worth individuals, but saw a smaller rise in their number, of 7.5%, in 2012.

The researchers also sub-divide the millionaires according to their wealth. There was an increase of 11% in 2012 in the number of people classified as "ultra high net worth individuals", the creme de la creme of the super-rich. These 110,000 people are worth $30m or more, and hold assets worth more than $16tn between them.

A middle group of just over a million people, the "mid-tier millionaires", held $10tn-worth of assets between them; and a much larger group of 10.8m people, which the report refers to as the "millionaires next door", held assets worth $1m-$3m.

The data also underlines the stark geographical divide in the distribution of wealth across the world, with just 140,000 of the 12m super-rich living across the entire continent of Africa. That was an increase of almost 10% from 2011; but still fewer than in Italy, Australia or Brazil.

RBC and Capgemini's analysts forecast that the super-rich will continue getting richer, with the total wealth held by this group expected to expand by 6.5% a year over the next three years.

The super-rich emerge from the survey conducted as part of the research as a relatively conservative group. They managed their assets cautiously in 2012, while fewer than half of them said they trusted financial markets; and fewer than 40% trusted regulators.

The authors said the super-rich respondents to the survey, "exhibited a clear bias toward safety and wealth preservation, allocating nearly 30% of their financial wealth into cash and deposits." This careful approach applied to millionaires of, "all ages and wealth levels, suggesting that the overall lower level of trust in the financial markets may be playing a role."

• Investing
• Financial sector
• Stock markets
• Rich lists

Heather Stewart
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Steel magnate

Nicola Jennings

In the south-east, 15% of households have wealth of £1m or more while the proportion drops to just 8% in the north-east

Households in the south-east of England are nearly twice as likely to have wealth in excess of £1m than those in the north of Britain, according to official statistics that underline a deep regional divide.

In the south-east, 15% of households have wealth* – including from their home – of £1m or more while the proportion drops to 8% in the north-east, Yorkshire and the Humber, Scotland and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The proportion of millionaire households is lowest in the north-west at 7%.

The data paints a similar north-south divide when it comes to households in the lowest wealth band. In the north-west and north-east about 25% of households have wealth of less than £50,000 while in the south-east the proportion drops to 15% and for the south west it is 17%.

But while the south-east region around it is clearly the most affluent in the latest ONS Wealth & Assets Survey, London stands out as having polarised wealth distribution. More than a quarter of households – 28% – have less than £50,000. The proportion of millionaire households is 12%, above the national rate of 10%. The ONS wealth measure is calculated by adding together property wealth, financial wealth, physical wealth such as jewellery and private pension wealth.

London's "hollowed out wealth distribution", as the ONS calls it, is starkest in the 45-to-64 age group, 22% of whom are in millionaire households whereas 18% have less than £50,000. The breakdown of wealth by age group also showed that children in London are among the most likely in the country to live in the poorest households. Four out of 10 children in London and in the north-west live in households with less than £50,000, double the proportion for the south-east. For Great Britain overall the share is 30%.Summing up its findings on wealth by age group, the ONS said: "On average, wealth is highest amongst the 45-64 year old age group; remains relatively high amongst the 65-plus age group but is lower for households in which children or young adults (25-44) live."

It found stark contrasts in the wealth of pensioners by region. Nearly a quarter (24%) of pensioners in the north-east live in households with net wealth of less than £50,000. In the south-west it was only 9% of pensioners. At the other end of the wealth scale, 44% of pensioners in the south-east live in a household with net wealth greater than £500,000, more than double the proportion in the north-east at 21%.

The report revealed that one in three households in the north-east had debts larger than their total financial assets.

The Trades Union Congress said the regional divides underscored the need to rebalance Britain's economy.

"Britain's north-south wealth divide runs deeper than pay packets and property values," said TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady. "Reducing this damaging wealth divide depends on rebalancing our economy so that high quality jobs are created throughout the country, as well as tackling the ongoing market failure in private pension provision."

The TUC also echoed now widespread criticism of government measures to help homebuyers, which many fear will drive up property prices. The Help to Buy scheme was branded "moronic" by one City analyst and has been called into doubt by Bank of England governor Mervyn King and the International Monetary Fund. O'Grady said any boost to prices was likely to deepen regional wealth divides.

• Office for National Statistics
• Rich lists
• London
• Property
• Executive pay and bonuses
• Housing market

Katie Allen
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Twenty cities have more than 100,000 millionaires – but which has most? And where do the world's billionaires live?
Millionaires | Multi-millionaires | Billionaires | Country
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Where do the world's wealthiest individuals live? Well, it depends if you're talking millionaires, multi-millionaires or billionaires, according to a new list of the global rich.

Tokyo may contain the most millionaires (US$), however London is the city with the highest number of multi-millionaires - defined as individuals with over $30m each. For the fattest of the fat cats, though, look to New York where 70 billionaires have made their home - or maybe one of their many global homes.

The ranking of top global cities for millionaires, multi-millionaires and billionaires has been compiled by London based wealth consultancy WealthInsight using five years of data analysed by their team. So what insights can we glean from this latest rich list?

Millionaires

Tokyo tops the list with 461,000 millionaires at the end of 2012, followed by New York City with 389,000. London and Paris take third and fourth place respectively with Frankfurt, Beijing, Osaka, Hong Kong and Shanghai making up the the remainder of the top ten. Interestingly the second highest city for billionaires, Moscow, comes in 20th for its number of millionaires.

The report also looks at the proportion of each country's millionaires in each city. Tokyo accounts for 21% of Japan's millionaires whereas New York City accounts for only 7% of US millionaires. Cities with much higher proportions include Seoul (83%), Rome (49%) and London (42%).

Multi-millionaires

Now for the big players, those individuals with over $30m each. London is top of the list as the city with the most multi-millionaires (4,224) but Tokyo and Singapore follow in second and third place respectively.

New York makes an appearance at fourth place on the rankings – but if you're surprised by the Big Apple's slip down the rich list, WealthInsight do point out that 'many wealthy New Yorkers live off the Island in cities such as Greenwich which has over 350 multi-millionaires on its own'.

Billionaires

New York (Manhattan) contains the most billionaires according to the release with 70 in the city. Moscow has 64 billionaires and London boasts 54.

Moscow, Mumbai and Istanbul are significantly higher on the billionaire list than they are on the millionaire rankings. Moscow which is ranked 20th for millionaires and is absent from the top 20 cities for multi-millionaires, comes in at third place on the billionaires list.

Hong Kong, Beijing, Mumbai, Istanbul, Shanghai, Paris and Los Angeles all make it into the top ten.

Country

Despite Tokyo topping the list as the city with the highest total of millionaires, when it comes to country level the US boasts the most with 5,231 in 2012 – a figure WealthInsight expects to jump to 7,318 by 2020.

But the country to watch according to the wealth consultancy is China. They predict that it will overtake Japan and Germany to become the second largest wealth market in the world by 2020. India is also expected to rise up the rankings, from 11th place in 2012 to 5th place in 2020.

The tables below show the top ten cities for millionaires, multi-millionaires and billionaires. The downloadable spreadsheet contains data at country level and the proportion of country's millionaires in each city. What can you do with this?

Data summary

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Ami Sedghi
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Baz Luhrmann's over-the-top take on Gatsby suggests we've recovered from recession and are ready to worship wealth again

When I first saw the trailer for The Great Gatsby film, my first thought was: why now? Gatsby is akin to America's version of Jane Austen books. It's part of the country's social fabric. It is widely read in high schools and remade for film and television every few years.

Then it hit me: opulence. After a horrendous few years for people's wallets, luxury is unabashedly back, and this latest film adaptation is like an invitation to celebrate it.

The Great Gatsby is a homage to wealth and social status in New York City. Already there's a certain clamour about the costumes. Fashion magazines like Marie Claire are gushing about the Prada-designed outfits. Even the film's makeup is a topic of intrigue. Carey Mulligan, who plays Gatsby's love interest Daisy, is playing it up. She compares her character to the Kardashians, the outlandish reality TV stars who flaunt everything they have.

Who better to bring this to the screen than Baz Luhrmann, the king of over-the-top? This time his scene is the Jazz Age, and the film's trailers show glimpses of parties that make Moulin Rouge look tame. As one of the previews explains:

"New York, 1922. The tempo of the city had changed sharply. The buildings were higher, the parties were bigger, the morals were looser and the liquor was cheaper."

I keep thinking that this film couldn't have been done four or even two years ago, in the depths of the recession.

When Hollywood tried to adopt the popular chick lit book Confessions of Shopaholic to the big screen in 2009, it flopped. The appetite wasn't there for mindless spending on handbags and shoes.

In those days, Kate Middleton was routinely sporting "high street" fashions that normal people (or at least the middle class) could buy. She wasn't worried about wearing the same dress multiple times because everyone was doing it. The same was true of America's first lady Michelle Obama, who was routinely praised for wearing outfits that rarely cost over $200.

Obama also made a big deal about starting a vegetable garden at the White House. This was partly to promote healthy eating, but also a reminder to American families of a cheap way to feed your family, reminiscent of the "victory gardens" many planted during the world wars.

The message post-2008 financial crash was clear: flaunting your wealth and status were out. Even those who had money were cautious as uncertainty abounded and even lawyers and bankers were losing their jobs.

The world economy is still not where it should be. We all know people out of work, especially recent graduates. But we're also starting to see what Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke calls "green shoots of recovery". And on the catwalks and in the real-estate markets of major cities, buyers seem steadily to be coming back and spending lavishly again. Just ask Middleton, who recently bought a £1,200 baby buggy.

Enter Jay Gatsby, the midwestern boy born into poverty who aspires to see the world, study at Oxford University and ultimately live in a mansion overlooking Long Island Sound in the most fashionable of New York suburbs. In the book, Gatsby's dream is described as dedicating his life to "the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty". And the muse of that dream is Daisy, an upper-crust young woman he falls in love with who is frivolous and foolish, but has a "a voice full of money".

Fitzgerald's story has resonated all these years because alongside the lavish parties and lazy afternoons is a harsh critique of wealth – and of clinging to fictitious versions of the past.

As audiences the world over marvel at the glitz of this latest adaptation, it will be particularly interesting to see how they leave the theatre. We are all eager to move past the recession, but have we learned our lesson about whether greed is good?

• Film adaptations
• F Scott Fitzgerald
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• Economics
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• US economic growth and recession
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Heather Long
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Footballer's fortune of £165m makes him richest British sports star ever but still leaves him in shade of Tiger Woods's £570m

He may be nearing the end of his playing days, but David Beckham remains the highest earner in British sport, according to the Sunday Times sport rich list.

Boxers, golfers, racing drivers and basketball players are left trailing in the wake of the global "brand Beckham" that has seen the 38-year-old amass a fortune of £165m – and that is without his wife's bank balance of £35m.

Beckham's wealth from sponsorship deals and salary payments from his company, Footwork Productions, over the last decade, make him easily the richest British sports star of all time. But he is still some way off the richest sportsman in the world – golfer Tiger Woods, who is worth a staggering £570m.

Manchester United's Wayne Rooney is the richest Premier League player, with a personal fortune of £51m. The striker is ahead of his Manchester United teammate Rio Ferdinand (£42m), and Michael Owen, the former Liverpool and Real Madrid striker, currently at Stoke (£38m).

Footballers account for £1.3bn of the £3.2bn accrued by the top earners and make up nearly half of the rich list, which includes current and former sportsmen in Britain and Ireland.

It includes 49 footballers, 12 golfers, 12 from motorsport, eight from rugby and five boxers, as well as those connected with horseracing, basketball, cricket, tennis, athletics and showjumping,

Lennox Lewis is the highest paid boxer, whose prize money and property assets give him a personal fortune of £95m.

Motor racing features prominently in the top tier of the rich list, with Eddie Irvine (£83m), Lewis Hamilton (£60m), Jenson Button (£58m) and David Coulthard (£53m) among the top 12 richest sportsmen.

After a 2012 in which he won gold and silver medals at the Olympics and won Britain's first grand slam title in more than 70 years, tennis player Andy Murray saw his position at the game's top table put beyond doubt – and his fortune leap by 33%, to £32m.

And despite his tender years, 23-year-old Rory McIlroy is worth £20m, just six years after turning professional. But his wealth is set to go stratospheric after he signed a sponsorship deal with Nike in January reportedly worth up to £156m over 10 years.

The rich list may highlight the enormous financial clout of Britain's top sports stars, but it is a decidedly one-sided affair – there is not a single woman on the list.

The list is based on identifiable wealth, including land, property, other assets such as art and racehorses, or significant shares in publicly quoted companies. It excludes bank accounts.

People competing abroad and foreign stars playing here are also eligible, as are football managers and racehorse trainers.

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This rich list leaves a sour taste – divorce shouldn't be treated as the ultimate cash prize in a particularly complex gameshow

Why marry for money, when you can divorce for money? The Sunday Times Rich List has included a shiny new category for "richest divorcees", featuring women who walked away from their marriage with tens or hundreds of millions. Lawyer Ayesga Vardag commented (paywalled link): "In England today, the single easiest way for an attractive woman to make her fortune is to marry a very rich man and then divorce him a few years later, preferably after having a child."

As get-rich-quick schemes go, it's got to be easier than pretending to put a record out on Kickstarter or inventing a new brand of burrito. The only investments required are time, and your pelvic floor. And as soon as you're out of there, you can wave your enormous novelty chequebook and buy a brand new pelvic floor. Think of it as sitting through a three-hour time share presentation while on holiday. Just keep smiling through your gritted teeth, sign the release, and then it's all buffet breakfasts and free tickets to Disneyworld.

The Rich List should be a ribald read, conjuring up glorious and unlikely images of four-storey swimming pools made from Fabergé eggs and diets invented to promote gout: ("And then, Toodles took the lobster and used the butter to … insert it into the swan! Come on, you've seen Last Tango In Paris …") But it doesn't just tell us how the other half lives – it gives an insight into what motivates us all, and tells us the trends we can expect to see trickling down and influencing those of us who don't have butlers.

The inclusion of a divorce subsection is more chilling than cheerful. One of the greatest privileges of living in the free world is that many people can choose to marry their partner for love – or choose not to marry them at all. Love fades, people change and the fact that we can take legal recourse in order to be released from unhappy relationships is definitely a sign that we live in a civilised, progressive society. But that doesn't mean we can treat divorce like the ultimate cash prize in a particularly complicated gameshow – even if the "runners up" who stay married are compensated with white goods and disappointing mini-breaks.

Thanks to a series of expensive settlements for divorcees such Heather Mills, Slavica Ecclestone and Orianne Cevey, who all elected to do their post-hitch ditching in Zone 1, London is now known as the Divorce Capital of the world. This can only end in tears, tasteless souvenir T-shirts and a "Divorce experience" London Eye package in which couples can civilly unpledge their troth over mini Beef Wellingtons and mid-price Prosecco. Divorce is a sometimes necessary tragedy. It has its place, but we shouldn't be celebrating it as a logical, lucrative endgame for marriage.

There's nothing joyful or celebratory about that list of newly minted divorcees. It's a selection of short stories about heartbreak and misery. The highest settlements have been awarded to mothers divorcing fathers, which means there are quite a few children who will grow up to be more familiar with the interior of a Learjet than they are with the sound of the people who made them talking and laughing together.

The gendered nature of the list is also problematic. It's troubling in the first instance that there are so few women on the Rich List. It's scary that there is a whole section dedicated to the women who have defined their wealth – and themselves – through their relationships. If I were an ambitious, enterprising, slightly naive teenager, I'd seriously consider the pursuit of billionaire bothering, compiling Excel spreadsheets with details of the whereabouts of the wealthy. It's got to be easier than going to university, reading science and starting even the most lucrative graduate role with debts surpassing the 10K mark.

If anyone reading the Rich List is inspired to seek their fortune through time-consuming and morally shadowy activity, I would suggest that they start practising as an elite divorce lawyer. The hours are long and the exposure to human misery is unrelenting, but at least you get to go home at night and sleep in a bed that has been paid for by the unhappiness of others, and not your own.

• Rich lists
• Women
• Marriage
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• Family finances
• Divorce

Daisy Buchanan
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The Sunday Times Rich List has crowned the Russian tycoon Britain's wealthiest person. How has Britain claimed him as its own?

Age: 59.

Appearance: Swollen Bob Hoskins.

Who is he? He's Russia's richest man.

And we care about this why? Because, as of this week, he's also our richest man.

Our richest man? Yup.

Did we buy him? Of course not. We're skint.

So in what way is he "our" richest man? The Sunday Times Rich List has just crowned him Britain's wealthiest person.

Yes, but how is he Britain's richest man? Oh, I see. Well, in a nutshell, he has more money than the next guy. The previous No 1 – Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal - fell to fourth place this year after a collapse in the value of his share portfolio. Usmanov, meanwhile, saw his fortune rise around £1bn to £13.3bn. Ergo: he had more money.

I'm familiar with the concept of "richest". I meant how is he British? Oh. Well, he lives here. Or at least owns a couple of very fancy houses here, including a £48m mansion in north London and the Tudor manor house and billionaire's playground Sutton Place in Surrey. He also owns a 30% stake in Arsenal football club.

And that's worth £13.3bn is it? Well, obviously not. Have you seen Olivier Giroud? Usmanov also owns Russia's biggest iron-ore producer, a stake in its largest internet company and a sizeable chunk of the mobile-phone firm MegaFon.

And what does he do with all this money? Focuses on his hobbies – he is president of FIE, the international fencing organisation – and, according to Wikipedia, buys art collections and donates them to children's television channels and the Russian state.

Sounds like a nice guy. Yeah. Although his PR people did get in trouble last year for editing his Wikipedia page.

What did they remove? Among other things that he had made legal threats against bloggers who repeated disobliging comments about his business practices, made by a former British ambassador.

And did they add anything? Yep. Some fluff about donated art.

Do say: "He may be a billionaire …"

Don't say: "… but he's our billionaire."

• Rich lists
• Sunday Times
• Alisher Usmanov

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The Sunday Times's annual naming of Britain's wealthiest residents coincided with the running of the London Marathon

Martin Rowson

Russian tycoon and major shareholder in Arsenal steals top spot in Sunday Times rich list from steel baron Lakshmi Mittal

Alisher Usmanov, the Russian tycoon who owns nearly a third of the Premier League football club Arsenal, has ousted steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal from his position as Britain's wealthiest person.

Mittal spent eight years at the top of the Sunday Times rich list but has dropped to fourth place in this year's survey, after his estimated fortune fell by £2.7bn to £10bn.

The 40% held by Mittal and his wife, Usha, stake in steelmaker ArcelorMittal has dropped as the value of the company's shares fell from more than €12 (£10.30) a year ago to €9, hit by the global economic downturn and cheap competion.

But Usmanov moved from second on the list to the top spot after the value of his assets rose by £985m to £13.3bn. Russia's richest man, whose business empire started with the manufacture of plastic bags but now encompasses iron ore producer Metalloinvest, a major stake in mobile phone operator MegaFon and a share in internet group mail.ru, Usmanov also owns Sutton Place, the former Surrey home of the late oil baron J Paul Getty and a £48m London mansion.

He made £1.6bn last year by selling Facebook shares when the social media group listed on the stock market.

The annual rich list is dominated by Russian and Indian billionaires, with the highest ranking Briton being the Duke of Westminster, worth £7.8bn thanks to his property holdings in London's Mayfair and Belgravia and ranked eighth.

The biggest riser was Russia's Len Blavatnik, the owner of Warner Music, whose wealth climbed by £3.4bn to £11bn after an increase in the value of his various shareholdings. Last month, he received £2bn for his stake in TNK-BP.

Belying the tough economic conditions in the UK, the number of billionaires climbed to 88 from 77 last year. Since the list was first published in 1989, the combined wealth of the top 200 has jumped from £38bn to £318.2bn.

In the first list, the richest person was the Queen with total wealth of £5.2bn. But this included the crown estates and the royal art collection, which have subsequently been excluded from the calculations.

• Rich lists
• Sunday Times
• Lakshmi Mittal
• Manufacturing sector
• Arcelor Mittal
• Alisher Usmanov

Nick Fletcher
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You get all sorts on the Rich List. Even some people who have actually earned their money

So, here it comes again: the annual roll call of freaks, weirdos, narcissists, megalomaniacs and sufferers of various antisocial personality disorders, otherwise known as the Rich List, published by another newspaper. There's the odd genuinely impressive captain of industry, I grant you. And then there's Simon Cowell.

But then all the greats are there: Richard Desmond, Philip Green, Lord Ashcroft, Richard Branson, Roman Abramovich, Alan Sugar, Duncan Bannatyne and Mark Thatcher. For if evidence were needed that wealth accrues only to the very brightest and the best, a quick perusal of the list will demonstrate that it is still needed.

In fact, the rundown of the 1,000 wealthiest individuals in Britain isn't just your regular common-or-garden annual salivating over the lifestyles of the rich and famous. This is the Rich List's silver jubilee, the 25th anniversary of the very first list. Or, to put it another way, this prurient, voyeuristic, possibly not entirely accurate celebration of the sometimes dubiously acquired wealth of Britain's uppermost class has been going on now for a quarter of a century.

As sport goes, ogling the riches of an increasingly global super-elite who have taken up residence on Britain's tax-lite, oligarch-friendly shores, the remnants of a so-called "aristocracy" still cashing in on land and assets they were gifted centuries ago, and a middling collection of chancers, moneymen, over-entitled divorcees, sublebrity entertainers and ageing rockers is a pretty dubious way to pass one's time. Particularly given the subtext that there is something to admire or envy about a collection of people whom one might describe, if one was trying to be polite and family-friendly, as not necessarily individuals one might want to bump into down a dark alley.

It is, on most levels, a ridiculous and largely pointless parade of wealth for wealth's sake, with the slimmest of claims to any sort of veracity. But as speculative figures go, you can compare them with some equally speculative figures from 25 years ago and come to various depressing conclusions.

The BBC points out that when the first list was published on 2 April 1989, it was presented as an indictment of Thatcherism. After 10 years of Thatcher in power, the list "grimly illustrated" the "very limited success of [her] revolution" because the original list was dominated by the landed classes; it contained 11 dukes, six marquesses, 14 earls and nine viscounts. Philip Beresford, the list's author, told the BBC that when he started, roughly two-thirds of the list were people who had inherited their wealth, whereas "today approaching 80% are self-made and that's really a legacy of the Thatcher years".

The beautiful thing about this is how handsomely individuals on the list have repaid the favour. On Friday, the Guardian detailed how some of the richest hedgies on this year's list also happen to be major Conservative donors. But then, when you're so rich that you're forced to spend your wealth building a £130,000 Palladian hen house – as Crispin Odey, founder of Odey Asset Management, has recently (knocking Sir Peter Viggers's £1,645 duck house into a cocked hat) – you might as well splash it around in the vicinity of the party that this year, in the midst of the most biting austerity measures in living memory, cut the top rate of tax.

Nor, then, is it especially surprising that of the 10 most highly placed lords on the list, eight are registered political donors. What? You think you get to be that rich by chance?

But then, for all that Beresford sings the praises of a new cadre of "self-made" billionaires, it's not quite as simple as that. In fact, the dukes and earls and viscounts are still there and doing quite nicely if you don't mind. The Duke of Westminster was in the top 10 in 1989. He still is. But then there's a clue in the title: "Westminster"? It's a borough. Somewhere near the middle of London. He owns vast swaths of it. James Goldsmith was number 10 in the original list, worth £750m then, and while his son and heir, Zac, has done his best to piss it up a wall, losing £20m in his 2010 divorce, he and his mother had managed to hang on to £280m of it (as of last year's list). Which is not bad going for having had the foresight and talent to be born.

The greatest change, though, is the emergence of London as a sort of Center Parcs for the global elite. We have the family-friendly facilities that oligarchs demand (Eton, Harrow and the ability to confer Little Lord Fauntleroy accents on even the most challenging offspring), and instead of water slides, there's always Harrods. But then, that's the wonderful thing about our super-light touch approach to non-dom taxation (generally, we don't bother).

A lot has been written about the new caste of global super-rich who walk among us. And yet not nearly enough, because these aren't funny, foreign visitors who add to the nation's gaiety and whose staggering wealth is simply there to be pored over and ogled at. Their wealth has distorted and continues to distort our entire society. Their effect on London's housing market has been nothing less than catastrophic. The Financial Times recently reported that an astounding 73% of prime central London new-build homes were bought by foreign buyers last year. Prices have increased £140bn since the financial crisis, or similar to the value of the entire housing stock in the north-east of England, calcifying regional inequalities, destroying social mobility and crippling the futures of an entire generation of young people.

There's a temptation to consider the list as one might consider the people on it – as some sort of freakshow that has nothing to do with the likes of us. But however spurious it might be, isn't it just a slightly less titillating version of Made in Chelsea: damning evidence of what a set of political decisions has done, decisions that the donations made by people on this list have helped buy? Sorry, my mistake: "influence". It's politics that's the spectacle here, not assets, trust funds or bulletproof Bentleys.

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Carole Cadwalladr
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The Sunday Times has named the wealthiest hedge fund managers as part of its annual rich list

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's tantrum at being listed as only the 26th richest man in the world highlights the detachment of the super-wealthy. Yet we are supposed to welcome such behaviour

The rich must feel insufficiently hated – the case of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal makes that conclusion hard to resist. One of the more prominent of King Ibn Saud's uncountable grandchildren (the founding monarch of Saudi Arabia had approximately 22 wives and at least 40 sons; number of daughters unknown), his shareholdings include chunks of News Corp, Apple, Citibank, and the Savoy Hotel, while his private amusements number a Boeing 747 that he uses as his private jet and a collection of 200 cars. Money, of course, can't buy you happiness, and the prince is unhappy. In its recently published list of billionaires, Forbes magazine estimated his wealth at $20bn (£15bn) and placed him 26th in a list headed by the Mexican tycoon, Carlos Slim ($73bn). The estimate and the ranking made Prince Alwaleed furious. He felt insulted. He was worth so much more!

As the magazine prepared to publish the list, the prince's hirelings wrote to protest at an undervaluation that, to quote one of several letters, "strikes in the face of improving Saudi-American bilateral relations and co-operation". Forbes, it said, was "putting down the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and that is a slap in the face of modernity and progress". Many people might have seen this differently – that any sign, however small, of a Saudi prince moderating his wealth might be a blow for modernity and progress – but never mind; the substance of the princely complaint was that he was worth $9.6bn more than Forbes said. The revaluation would have ranked him 10th in the list, one down from the L'Oréal heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, but Forbes refused to budge. The list's editor, Kerry Dolan, said that Alwaleed had a habit of inflating his wealth purely to get on her list. "Of the 1,426 billionaires on our list, not one – not even the vainglorious Donald Trump – goes to greater measure to try to affect his or her ranking," she wrote. On hearing of his valuation in 2006, he had phoned her "nearly in tears".

Alwaleed's behaviour is magnificently childish – a magazine is only a magazine, a list is only a list – but perhaps tears before bedtime could be expected from a man who has installed a throne in his 747 and presumably straps himself into it for landing and take-off. The more interesting thing is his self-absorption: how little he cares that those of us who aren't billionaires or even millionaires – in other words more than 99% of the global population – might feel further estranged from the plutocracy and vow to damage it, one way or another.

In the 1970s I had a good friend, now dead, who belonged to the Communist party and kept a copy of Tatler magazine in his lavatory. In a shabby basement flat in east London that trembled to the noise of trains heading for Liverpool Street, the sight of pearly young women pictured "on the stairs" at hunt balls was more than just politically incongruous. But when he was upbraided about it, my friend would explain that he read the magazine so that he knew "what the other side was up to". What they and their boyfriends and parents were up to was, by today's standards, nothing very much. Land rents, share dividends, jobs in stockbroking, insurance and the army: my friend may have frowned at these sources of income, but individually they probably multiplied his own earnings as a freelance journalist by no more than three or four times.

We weren't to know that Britain in terms of wealth distribution was a more equal place in the late 70s than it was ever before or has ever been since. As for the world beyond western Europe and north America, with a few exceptions (Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia), it had still to produce a millionaire class. If 2013's Forbes list had been placed beside my friend's 1978 lavatory, what gasps of disbelief and outrage it would have provoked. According to Forbes' calculations, 210 individuals have become dollar billionaires in the past year, bringing the total to 1,426 – at a time when large parts of the world are suffering acute financial distress. The wealth at their disposal has grown from $4.6tn to $5.4tn in the same period, roughly equivalent to a third of the US's annual GDP. Credit Suisse estimates that the richest 1% of the world's population – that is, those worth $710,000 and over – control 46% of the world's assets. A large proportion of the profits from these is shielded from government view, and therefore from any hope of redistributive taxation, in tax havens. "Trickle down" economics seem limited to the personal servant class of hairdressers, chefs and chauffeurs. The shadow of inequality lengthens everywhere else.

All this is familiar, as familiar as the figure for Wayne Rooney's weekly wage. Every day brings stories of fresh excesses of wealth and privilege that make the targets of an older resentment look insular and ridiculous – Lady Docker's gold car, for heaven's sake! – yet at the beginning of the last century political movements were inspired by anger at "how the other half lived".

Prince Alwaleed was just one example in this week's crop, which also included the Emir of Qatar buying six Greek islands and the disclosure in a London court that two other members of Saudi royalty, Prince Mishal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud and his son Prince Abdulaziz, never had to pass through immigration when they entered the UK and could claim "sovereign immunity" from any charges. Elsewhere, Ivan Glasenberg boasted that his $1.5m salary from the Glencore commodities firm made him among the lowest paid CEOs in the FTSE 100, while taking $109m out of the company in dividends. From the Geneva motor show came news that while European car sales dropped overall by 3.3m last year, luxury models such as Rolls-Royce, McLaren and Lamborghini had never done better. A spokesman for Rolls-Royce explained that although the global economy was stagnant "some people are doing very well and want to reward themselves".

The effect on the rest of us is uncertain. People click their tongues and do non-ironic imitations of Victor Meldrew. We can't believe it, that so few people should have so much money, but any despair or rage we feel has yet to find a major political party that will give it a proper articulation. The trend seems unstoppable, and of any northern country, Britain sometimes seems closest to the wheels of the juggernaut. We'll fight the EU to save the City of London's bonuses and squash thousands of new flats along the Thames's south bank for international elites to invest – perhaps even stay – in. In a nice phrase, the BBC's Evan Davis once summarised Britain's future as "butler to the world", and perhaps at some barely conscious level we've absorbed the truth of this: that to keep our wages coming in, we have at all times to be polite and welcoming to the very rich, hiding our disgust behind our hand as we open the door to plutocrat X or prince Y and say: "Ah, sir, how very good it is to see you again. I have prepared a warm bath and a hot concubine just as you like them. Pay no attention to the talk of revolution in the kitchen."

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Saudi Arabia businessman, one of the most influential in the Middle East, says he has been undervalued by $9.6bn

For most people, even featuring in the Forbes list of the world's billionaires would be cause for celebration, but for Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, appearing at number 26 with $20bn (£15bn) was an insult.

The prince, one of the most influential businessmen in the Middle East, insists the list undervalues him by $9.6bn. He has vowed to sever all ties with the group's reporters and accused them of damaging US-Saudi relations.

In response, the editor of the influential list has written a stinging rebuke saying the prince considers a top-10 ranking one of his priorities, systematically exaggerates his wealth and spends more time and effort than any other businessman on attempts to boost his ranking – even more time and effort than Donald Trump.

Forbes's estimate of Alwaleed's wealth at $20bn puts him behind Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But Alwaleed, a nephew of the Saudi king whose investments are run by his Kingdom Holding Company, estimates his own wealth at $29.6bn (£19.5bn), which would catapult him into the top 10 of the magazine's richest people on the planet, just behind 90-year-old French cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

Forbes said the prince's camp wrote four letters in the build-up to the list's publication in an effort to secure a favourable valuation. In one letter his chief financial officer, Shadi Sanbar, said an undervaluation "strikes in the face of improving Saudi-American bilateral relations and co-operation. Forbes is putting down the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and that is a slap in the face of modernity and progress."

But Forbes hit back, with billionaire list editor Kerry Dolan explaining it no longer considers the share price of Alwaleed's Saudi-listed Kingdom Holdings an accurate reflection of its value.

She points out that the share price would soar by up to 136% in the weeks before Forbes locked in the valuation to calculate its rankings in the past three years.

Dolan wrote: "The value that the prince puts on his holdings at times feels like an alternate reality, including his publicly trading Kingdom Holdings, which rises and falls based on factors that, coincidentally, seem more tied to the Forbes billionaires list than fundamentals."

In a scathing character assassination, the writer describes the prince as a vainglorious businessman in the "absurdly opulent" surroundings of his marble-clad palaces filled with portraits of himself. "If he needs to go on a business trip, he has his own 747, à la Air Force One, except unlike the president, his plane has a throne."

During a trip to Riyadh in 2008, the article said, he showed off his wealth, including what he claimed was a $700m haul of jewels, and sent the magazine's US offices mocked up copies of Vanity Fair, Time 100 and Forbes magazine itself with his face adorning the front covers, according to Dolan.

"Of the 1,426 billionaires on our list, not one – not even the vainglorious Donald Trump – goes to greater measure to try to affect his or her ranking.

"In 2006 when Forbes estimated that the prince was actually worth $7bn less than he said he was, he called me at home the day after the list was released, sounding nearly in tears."

Shares in Kingdom Holdings, his vehicle for investments in Citigroup, Newscorp and Apple, among others, would rise in the 10 weeks before the Forbes list was finalised.

In 2010 its shares rose 57%, despite shares in Citigroup falling 20% in the same period. In 2011 the same happened, with a 31% rise in Kingdom's shares, and in 2012 they jumped 136%.

A former Alwaleed executive told Forbes that market manipulation in Saudi Arabia was rife. The magazine quoted the executive as saying: "This is the national sport … There are no casinos. It's the gambling site of the Saudis."

The prince, who enjoys the nickname "the Buffett of Arabia" after shrewd investments in eBay and Apple, called the allegations "completely unsupported and biased".

A statement added: "The application of differing standards of proof for different individuals and organizations results in an arbitrary and confusing set of standards that seems demonstrably biased against the Middle East."

Sanbar, chief financial officer of Kingdom Holding, said: "We have worked very openly with the Forbes team over the years and have on multiple occasions pointed out problems with their methodology that need correction.

"However, after several years of our efforts to correct mistakes falling on deaf ears, we have decided that Forbes has no intention of improving the accuracy of their valuation of our holdings and we have made the decision to move on."

He said they would now focus on working with Bloomberg Billionaires index, a Forbes rival launched last year, which estimates the prince's wealth at $28bn, ranking him not in the top 10, but the world's 16th wealthiest person.

A princely sum

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal boasts that Forbes has referred to him twice as "one of the world's most intelligent and creative investors". On his website he claims to have met more than 250 heads of state and world leaders and says: "As a man of significant wealth and influence, Prince Alwaleed is humbled when people look to him for advice and guidance on issues such as religion, global peace and how society should adapt to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

The Saudi prince, 57, owns 95% of the Kingdom Holding Company, which trades on the Saudi stock exchange. As well as shares in companies such as News Corp and Citibank it holds stakes in a string of luxury hotels including the Savoy in London, the George V in Paris and the Fairmont Raffles.

The company started investing in Apple in 1997, the year Steve Jobs returned to the helm of the company he founded. It recently bought an estimated 3% of Twitter for $300m (£230m) and has stakes in AOL and Motorola.

Not all his investments have been a great success. In 1997 he bought a stake in TWA, which declared chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001 and merged with American Airlines. Another notable failure was Kodak, which went bust last year, overwhelmed by the digital photography revolution.

He invested in Euro Disney in 1994, and in 1995 helped complete Canary Wharf by putting in cash when the owner was in receivership. The group holds a third of Jeddah Economic, which owns the project to build the 1,000-metre, $1.2bn Kingdom Tower in Jeddah.

The prince also holds an 80% stake in Rotana, one of the Middle East's biggest media companies.

His 200 cars include a Rolls-Royce Phantom and Lamborghinis and Ferraris. His fleet of private jets includes a Boeing 747, an Airbus 321 and a Hawker Siddeley 125.

According to Forbes he was the first individual to buy an Airbus A380 double decker plane and was supposed to take delivery of it this spring, but Kingdom Holding's chief financial officer told the magazine that the plane has been sold.

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Simon NevilleJosephine Moulds
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The latest Forbes rich list 2013 is out

Forbes have released the list of the richest people on the planet – there are now 1,426 billionaires with a net worth of $5.4tn

Saudi investor severs ties with annual billionaires' list, claiming its 'flawed' valuation disadvantages Middle East investors

One of the world's richest men, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has severed ties with the Forbes rich list, claiming it understated his wealth.

The Saudi investor, ranked 26th in the billionaires' list released on Monday, accused Forbes of a "flawed" valuation method that undervalued his assets and "seemed designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions".

Forbes estimates that Alwaleed – a nephew of the Saudi king with investments in everything from News Corp to the Savoy hotel – is worth $20bn (£13bn), putting him behind Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Alwaleed, on the other hand, estimates his own wealth at $29.6bn, which would catapult him into the top 10 of the magazine's richest people on the planet, just behind 90-year-old French cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

The prince wrote a letter to Forbes's editor-in-chief, Steve Forbes, saying he will no longer provide the magazine with information about his finances and has reportedly instructed lawyers over the matter.

In a stinging rebuke, Alwaleed said he would continue to work with the Bloomberg Billionaires index, which was launched last year as a rival to Forbes's long-established list. Bloomberg – which uses figures provided by Alwaleed's investment vehicle, Kingdom Holding Company, as well as its own financial data – estimates the prince's wealth at $28bn, ranking him the world's 16th wealthiest person.

Forbes responded to the allegations saying it had been investigating the prince's finances for several years and would detail its findings in a feature story in the magazine, released online on Tuesday.

The bone of contention appears to be Forbes's refusal to use share values as listed by Saudi Arabia's stock exchange, while it accepts the valuations of other emerging markets such as the Mexican stock exchange. Kingdom added that it had found inconsistencies in Forbes's reporting, including "a completely unsupported and biased allegation based on rumours that stock manipulation 'is the national sport' in Saudi Arabia because 'there are no casinos'".

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Carlos Slim, worth $73bn, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, with $67bn and Zara tycoon Amancio Ortega are world's wealthiest

Many of the world's largest economies may be weathering the toughest recessionary storms in living memory, but for those at the top there has rarely been an easier time to join the billionaires' club.

Some 210 multi-millionaires were propelled into the premier league of extreme wealth in the last 12 months as they achieved 10-figure fortunes and the world now plays host to a record 1,426 dollar billionaires, according to Forbes magazine's study.

This super-rich set together sit on wealth estimated at $5.4tn (£3.6tn) – equal to more than a third of the annual output of the US, the world's largest economy. Last year the billionaires' club held a combined wealth of $4.6tn.

At the top of the billionaire tree, once again, is the Mexican telecoms magnate Carlos Slim, with an estimated worth of $73bn, followed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has a fortune of $67bn. The success of the company behind Zara, the world's biggest rag‑trade operation, saw the retired Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega – who still owns 60% of the business – climb into third place in the rankings. His fortune is put at $57bn.

Despite Spain being locked in one of Europe's most crippling recessions, with 55% youth unemployment, Ortega was estimated to have seen the biggest rise in wealth of any billionaire, adding $19.5bn to his pot. As a result, he has leapfrogged Warren Buffett, the investment tycoon known as the Sage of Omaha, who last month swallowed up the Heinz food empire for $28bn.

Buffett's wealth is put at $55.5bn. It is the first time in 13 years that he has not featured in Forbes' top three. Despite this slip, the rankings at the very top echelons of the billionaires' club remained remarkably static, dominated by wise heads that have weathered many recessions in the past. Of Forbes' top 10, eight are aged 70 or older.

Trade union leaders, economists and anti-poverty campaigners said the swelling fortunes of the fast-expanding billlionaire set signalled that levels of wealth inequality were fast approaching crisis levels.

The TUC general secretary, Frances O'Grady, said: "These latest findings from Forbes make for very disturbing reading. Trickle-down economists may love having a growing super-elite, but seem to forget the fact that rising pay inequality was a major cause of the financial crash.

"Faced with flat wages, many people borrowed to maintain their living standards whilst the very wealthy put their cash into ever more risky investments to squeeze out returns. Unless wealth is spread more broadly, we will be unable to build a sustainable recovery, as consumer spending will continue to flat-line."

Other senior figures to raise concerns over spiralling inequality include Angel Gurría, OECD secretary general, who said "widening disparities weaken the structures that hold our society together", while Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, recently warned business leaders in Davos that "the economics profession and the policy community have downplayed inequality for too long."

Among the young turks to join the billionaires club in recent years are the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 28, and his former collaborators Eduardo Saverin, 30, and Dustin Moskovitz, 28. Despite a fortune estimated at $3.8bn, Moskovitz is said to bike to work, shun business class flights and, according to Forbes, "pitches his own tent at [Nevada desert counter-culture festival] Burning Man". The Twitter co-founder and punk music fan Jack Dorsey also scrapes on to the list, with a fortune put at $1.1bn.

Women were well represented among newcomers to the Forbes list, though they still only account for 138 of the world's billionaires, albeit up from 104 last year. The world's richest woman is the 90-year-old French cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who is the ninth-richest person internationally. Her L'Oréal empire is best known for its "because I'm worth it" television advertising slogan.

The US is home to 442 billionaires, according to Forbes, with 366 in Europe, 129 elsewhere in the Americas and 103 in the Middle East and Africa.

Despite turbulent times for many of the largest economies in the world, 210 new billionaires were minted in the last 12 months – three times the number of individuals who fell off the list. This concentration of wealth took place despite a strengthening in the dollar against many major currencies.

Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank that specialises in catering to super-rich clients, estimated last autumn that the world's richest 1% – that is, those with wealth of $710,000 and greater – control 46% of global assets. In its annual Global Wealth report, the bank estimated that the number of individuals with fortunes in excess of $50m around the world had reached 84,500. "Notwithstanding the credit crisis and the more recent setbacks, the past decade has been especially conducive to the establishment of large fortunes," Credit Suisse concludes.

The tax campaigner James Henry, a former economist with the global consultancy firm McKinsey, has estimated that between $21tn and $32tn of the world's wealth had been stashed, tax-free, in offshore investments – with about half of this sum controlled by the world's richest 91,000 people. "Almost all of it has managed to avoid all income and estate taxes, either by the countries where it has been invested and or where it comes from," his study found.

The highest-ranking British billionaire on Forbes' list is the Duke of Westminster, Gerald Grosvenor. His Grosvenor Group owns large tracts of land in Mayfair and Belgravia and can trace its roots back to 1677, is worth $11.4bn. Fourth on the UK rankings was his fellow land-owning aristocrat Lord Cadogan, whose Cadogan Estates includes a lot of real estate in Chelsea.

Foreign billionaires who have made London their home and who feature in many UK rich lists were not classed as British by Forbes. Those not qualifying as British billionaires included the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, the Russian mining and investment tycoon Alisher Usmanov and the Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.

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Mexican telecoms magnate remains world's richest, while Spanish fashion entrepreneur Amancio Ortega knocks Warren Buffett out of top three

The world now plays host to a record 1,426 dollar billionaires, after 210 multimillionaires were propelled into the premier league of extreme wealth in the last 12 months, according to Forbes magazine.

This super-rich set together sit on wealth estimated at $5.4tn, equivalent to more than a third of the annual output of America, the world's largest economy. Last year the billionaires' club held combined wealth of $4.6tn (£2.6bn).

Top of the tree once again is the Mexican telecoms magnate Carlos Slim, with an estimated worth of $73bn, followed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, with a fortune of $67bn. The success of the company behind Zara, the world's biggest rag trade operation, saw the Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega climb into third place in the rankings. His fortune is put at $57bn.

Despite Spain being locked in one of Europe's most crippling recessions, with 55% youth unemployment, Ortega was estimated to have seen the biggest rise in his wealth, adding $19.5bn. As a result, he has leapfrogged Warren Buffett, the so-called Sage of Omaha who last month swallowed up the Heinz food empire for $28bn.

Buffett's wealth is put at $55.5bn. It is the first time in 13 years that he has not featured in Forbes's top three.

The world's richest woman is the 90-year-old French cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who is the ninth richest person internationally. Her L'Oreal empire is best known for its "Because I'm worth it" television advertising slogan.

America hosts 442 billionaires, according to Forbes, with 366 in Europe, 129 in the Americas and 103 in the Middle East and Africa.

Despite turbulent times for many of the largest economies in the world, 210 new billionaires were minted in the last three months – three times the number of individuals who fell off the list. Among the newcomers, women were well represented, though they still only account for 138 of the world's billionaires, up from 104 last year.

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I have finally finished redesigning and updating the website. It is now leaner cleaner and with fewer broken links and much less extraneous stuff. In particular the lists of all the subscriptionfee based resources have gone or nearly all gone. There were too many of them for me to list accurately and to be honest I dont see why I should give them free advertising. For those who want to know about the latest research resources I suggest you ask RiF or post a message on PRUK. If someone wants to pay me to recommend their product that is another matter but it will cost you 1631000. And thats if I like the product... And so on to 2013 during which I hope to finally finish and then publish my new book How to find rich people to support your cause. Unless I win the lottery first that is...