The wealth of the world’s high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) declined by nearly one fifth last year to $33 trillion, according to the 2009 World Wealth Report from Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. A HNWI has at least $1 million of assets besides a primary residence, its contents and collectible items. In 2008, the number of HNWIs fell to 8.6 million, or slightly more than 0.1 percent of the world’s population.
Their wealth declined by more than 20 percent in North America, Europe and Asia, and by a bit less in Africa and the Middle East. Latin America’s rich were the least affected: they lost just six percent of their wealth, and the number of HNWIs there fell by less than one percent. In North America, which had a large proportion of people just above the $1 million threshold, the ranks slimmed by 19 percent.
An interesting aside: That $33 trillion is almost half of the $70 trillion that constitutes the subset of global savings known as fixed-income securities - or, all the money in the world.
In a recent interview for the 
compared with last year. Second-quarter totals for EMEA markets are down 24 percent from the first quarter to just $17.3 billion, a 71 percent drop from 2008. The good news is in the Asia Pacific markets, where RCA projects an 18 percent gain over the first quarter with a total of $23.3 billion in sales, approximately half of the second-quarter worldwide numbers.