The 11th annual World Wealth Report was released recently by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, and showed that the wealth of the world’s high net worth individuals (HNWIs) has increased by more than 11% in 2006, to US$37.2 trillion.

The number of HNWIs around the world grew 8.3% over the same period, to 9.5 million. The number of ultra high net worth individuals (Ultra–HNWIs) increased 11.3% to nearly 95 000.

A small graph, but the growth in HNWI numbers from 2004 (left) to 2006 (right) is obvious

The largest areas of growth in HNWI numbers occurred in Singapore and India, where the increases over 2005 were 21.2% and 20.5%, respectively.

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