Asia Overtakes United States As Region With The Most Billionaires For The First Time

Asia have overtaken the United States as the region with the most billionaires for the first time. Last year America had 563 billionaires while Asia had 637, a report by financial services firm UBS and auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers found.

The report credited the reversal of fortunes to the arrival of a new entrepreneurial class in China, with Asia creating a new billionaire every three days on average.

But while Asian billionaires now outnumber their US counterparts, the Americans still control more wealth in total. Europe took third spot in the report's billionaire database with 342.

In total there are now 1,542 billionaires in the world controlling $6trillion between them.