November 10: The world’s richest people became a little less well off last year as geopolitical turmoil and volatile equity markets reduced the wealth of billionaires for the first time since 2015, a report shows.

Billionaires’ wealth fell by $388 billion globally to $8.539 trillion, the UBS/PwC Billionaires Report found. Reuters reported that there was a particularly sharp decline in Greater China, the second biggest home for billionaires after the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region more broadly.

According to Reuters, private banks including the world’s largest wealth manager UBS have felt the effects of US-China trade tensions and global political uncertainties, as clients last year shied away from trading and taking on debt in favour of hoarding more cash.

The net worth of China’s richest dropped 12.8 percent in dollar terms on the back of tumbling stock markets and a weaker local currency and as growth in the world’s second-largest economy slowed to its lowest level in nearly three decades in 2018, the report found, knocking dozens off the billionaires list.

Despite the drop, China continues to produce a new billionaire every 2-2.5 days, UBS’s head of ultra-high net worth clients, Josef Stadler, said in the report released on Friday.

Worldwide, the number of billionaires fell everywhere except in the Americas, where tech entrepreneurs continued to buoy the ranks of the United States’ wealthiest, Reuters further reported.

“This report shows the resilience of the U.S. economy,” where there were 749 billionaires at the end of 2018, said John Matthews, head of private wealth management and ultra-high net worth business for UBS in the United States.

While a stock market recovery from a steep drop in late 2018 has helped wealth managers increase their assets, the world’s richest families remain concerned about global affairs from trade tensions and Brexit to populism and climate change and are continuing to keep more of their money in cash.