(Bloomberg) — The world's ultra-high net worth individuals now face a bevy of headwinds including "succession and inheritance issues," higher taxes, and a potential slowdown in the global economy, according to the latest edition of Knight Frank LLP's 2016 Wealth Report.
"One of the most interesting findings is that a significant proportion of respondents —leading wealthadvisors and private bankers from around the world — expect their clients' wealth to increase at a slower rate over the next 10 years than the past decade," the report said.
Indeed, almost 6,000 people fell out of the ultra-high net worth bracket last year. That's 3 percent slide from the year before and the first annual drop in the world's population of rich people since the 2008 financial crisis, according to Knight Frank.
"The rate of global economic growth slowed in 2015, while growth in equity, commodity and other asset prices also decelerated," the report explained.
Trickier times already have arrived for some, the report suggests.
In countries like Greece, where financial burdens and political tensions have been especially prevalent in recent years, there's been an 18 percent drop in the amount of money invested inside the country's borders as billionaires scurried to shift money out of the country.
That's bucked a general trend that has seen the world's wealthy investing in foreign countries like never before, a move that has contributed to cross-border flows but also appears to have made the rich more exposed to a potential slowdown in the global economy as well as cross-border crackdowns on wealth.
Two thirds of respondents to Knight Frank's survey said they expect their clients' rate of wealth growth to slow over the next decade, while 84 percent of respondents in Australasia reckoned an economic slowdown is on its way. That is perhaps unsurprising, the report noted, given that "much of the wealthcreation in the region has been powered by China's economic growth, which is now slowing."
China's outward investment in other countries has jumped a massive 1,013 percent over the last 10 years, according to Knight Frank analysis based on data from the International Monetary Fund. That, alongside the liberalization of some emerging markets, has helped to propel the boom in cross-border investment by the world's wealthy.
