Unlike matter, wealth is created, destroyed and also inherited.
The Swiss bank UBS has just published its latest annual report on the origin of great fortunes in which, for the first time in the nine years in which it has been preparing it, it concludes that the new international billionaires already come more from inheritances than from entrepreneurship. business. And to top it off, his prediction is that the same thing will continue to happen in the future.
The report is accompanied by conclusions that would go unnoticed if they came from an equality activist, but those who formulate them are UBS, the undisputed leader of Swiss banking after absorbing Credit Suisse, whose specialization is precisely private banking and the management of large companies. fortunes.
The bank assures that "a new cohort of multi-generation families is being formed, in which each one has its own vision of its legacy and ambitions." It is a new elite to which it is advisable to provide tailored solutions.
"For the first time in nine editions of the report, billionaires have accumulated more wealth through inheritance than through entrepreneurship, indicating that the great transfer of wealth is gaining momentum," adds UBS.
According to their data, in 2015, when the bank began carrying out this analysis, the creation of private fortunes of a multimillion-dollar nature through inheritance was 137.8 billion dollars, less than the 193.6 billion coming from self-made ones, this It is, of the self-made entrepreneur. In 2018, entrepreneurship was overwhelmingly the way to achieve great wealth, generating 437.7 billion, compared to just 73.9 billion from inheritance.
However, the big change has come in 2023, according to UBS calculations, which are carried out with the help of a database managed by PwC. There has been a surprise and inheritances have contributed 150.8 billion dollars so far this year, compared to 140.7 billion from business initiatives.
UBS's work, known as the Billionaire Ambitions Report, predicts that this trend will continue. "It is an aspect that we hope to continue seeing in the next 20 years, in which more than 1,000 billionaires will transfer about $5.2 trillion to their children," says Benjamin Cavalli, head of strategic clients at UBS Global Wealth Management.
For a bank like UBS, dedicated to moving the money of these millionaires, the change in profile is important in terms of investment and philanthropy. Successors also have the need to "do things differently", and this is where the report takes on an aspect more in line with UBS's activity: "They must more than ever discover common values and objectives to find a way that please all generations and allow them to continue building their legacy.
This year, the inheritance has allowed 53 people to enter the billionaires' club. The 150.8 billion dollars inherited imply an average of 2.845 million per head, which accounts for the volume of these fortunes. In Spain, according to the latest edition of the Forbes list, there are barely ten people with assets greater than this amount, among them the two best-known company founders, Amancio Ortega and Juan Roig.
The heirs, says UBS, have a greater appetite for innovative technologies, the clean energy transformation and impact investments. Meanwhile, for the founders of the company, or at least for 58% of them, the concern is to instill in their heirs the values, education and experience necessary to take over.
Another curiosity of the report is that self-made entrepreneurs are above all concerned about a possible recession (62%) and geopolitical tensions (62%), while heirs, perhaps more familiar with financial and speculative aspects, are concern about inflationary pressures (57%) and the price of raw materials (52%).
