Asia billionaire pool surpasses US; region's income gap not expected to widen

Singapore

FOR the first time, the number of billionaires in Asia has surpassed those in the US - but the issue of a widening income gap between the haves and have-nots in Asia is not a cause for concern, as the trickle-down effect of wealth is said to be felt across all segments.

According to the findings of the Billionaires Report 2017 by UBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) published on Thursday, there was a 23 per cent increase from 2015 to 637 Asian billionaires in 2016, compared with a 5 per cent rise to 563 billionaires for the same period in the US.