wealth

Research on estate transitions is quite specific: 70% of families will lose their assets and their coherence as a family unit following the transition of their estate. Why is this? What are the causes? Unfortunately, the answers to these questions and solving the horrific failure rate are neither obvious nor easy.

While the causes of post-transition failure are puzzling to most families, they are no longer a mystery to researchers: the biggest cause of failure lies in unprepared heirs.

Novelist Edith Wharton once wrote that the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it, writes Marc Smith. While this may have been the case during the US author's lifetime, which ended just after the Great Depression, wealthy women in the post-credit crunch world are not only thinking hard about the money they have, they are taking control of it too.

Private wealth around the globe increased 5% to $109.5 trillion last year, according to a new report on global wealth by Boston Consulting Group.

Most of the growth was centred in developing markets such as the Middle East and China, however, North America remained the wealthiest region with $39.2 trillion assets under management. Wealth in Asia totalled about $25.5 trillion in 2007, with Japan accounting for nearly half of this.

The overall trend of increased global wealth continues despite the slowdown in the global economy, according to the 2008 World Wealth Report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch. The wealth of the world’s richest citizens is up 9.4% to $40.7 trillion, with the average wealth of a high net worth individual surpassing $4 million for the first time.