According to this annual survey by Henley & Partners (first chart from Bloomberg), these are the top 10 wealthiest cities in the world when you count the number of high-net-worth individuals (i.e. people with investable wealth greater than US$1 million):
However, if you instead count billionaires, the top city flips from New York City to the Bay Area (which includes San Francisco and all of Silicon Valley). This isn't all that surprising.
Also not surprising is the precipitous decline in the number of HNWIs residing in Hong Kong. From 2012 to 2022, the number declined by 27%. That said, a bunch of other cities fared even worse. The city that lost the most millionaires over this same decade was Moscow. It declined by 44%.
For those of you wondering about Toronto, we placed 12th, just after Chicago, with 105,200 millionaires, 193 centi-millionaires, and 18 billionaires:
The next city in Canada on the list is Vancouver, and following that is Montreal:
It is interesting to see how much further behind Montreal places with these metrics given that it is an urban region with about 1.6x the population of that of Vancouver's.
Also interesting -- given its size and global importance -- is Paris (18th when it comes to HNWIs):
However, when it comes to seasonal draw, Paris is second only to Miami, which appears to be the undisputed global destination for rich people in the winter. Paris has 126 centi-millionaire residents, but during its peak holiday month (presumably summer), this number is believed to increase to over 300:
Finally, looking at Park City, Utah, it has 8 permanent centi-millionaires and this number is thought to increase to over 100 during the winter snowboarding season. And to be clear, this transient population figure only includes people who own a second home there. It does not include rich people paying US$3,700 per night to stay at Deer Valley. That's pretty good for a small town of only 8,500 permanent residents.
To check out the full list of 97 cities, click here.
