Beijing has surpassed New York to become the city that has the highest number of billionaires for the very first time. This is according to a report released by Hurun, a China-based research firm concerning the billionaire capital.
The Chinese capital now has 100 billionaires occupying it compared to the 95 that live in New York City.
China’s Commerce center, Shanghai, takes the fifth position.
Hurun is involved in tracking the wealth in China and made available the Global Rich List which has been compiled for the five years that have passed. It measured the wealth of the billionaire’s in US dollars.
The privately owned research firm bases its data on publicly traded companies as well as interviews to come up with a complete conclusion. Some of its other engagements is the production of luxury magazines.
Companies like Forbes and Bloomberg do implement varied methodology thus arriving at different conclusions.
Hurun research findings are that Beijing saw 32 new billionaires live in it unlike New York that only welcomed 4 new billionaires.
Moscow takes the third place in which it has 68 billionaires.
Overall, China takes the first position as the country with the highest number of billionaires but still the top 10 billionaires in the Hurun list has been taken by the Americans.
After welcoming 90 new billionaires, the total number of billionaires in the country is now 568 compared to the 535 in US.
The combined net worth of China’s billionaires is $ 1.4 trillion.
The chairperson to Hurun, Hoogewerf, noted that despite the tough economic situation in China, the number of billionaires still increased.
He said told AP news agency that the increase could have been caused by new shares being taken back to the Public Offerings after a number of years.
The top 10 billionaires in Hurun’s list is dominated by Americans in which Bill Gates takes the first position with a net worth of $80bn, followed by Warren Buffet whose net worth is $68 bn.