The Big Apple is home to the most millionaires in the world — despite the recent exodus of wealth spurred on by the pandemic.
There are 350,000 millionaires in New York City, a 48% increase from a decade ago, meaning that one in 24 of the city’s 8.2 million residents has at least a seven-figure net worth, according to a global ranking of the wealthiest cities by immigration consultancy Henley & Partners, earlier reported on by Bloomberg.
The city’s proportion of millionaires increased from one in 36 in 2013, the report found.
In fact, New York has 60 billionaires and 744 people with investable wealth of more than $100 million.
Henley & Partners defines the term “millionaire” as “individuals with liquid investable wealth of USD $1 million or more.”
Liquid investable wealth is either cash or cash equivalents that can easily be converted into cash without losing much value, such as marketable securities like stocks, bonds or mutual funds, as well as money market funds, which typically invest in government securities and certificates of deposit.
Collectively, New York City citizens have upwards of $3 trillion in wealth.
The financial capital of the US has benefitted from the boom in the stock market in the past few years, according to Juerg Steffen, Henley & Partners’ chief executive officer.
Last year, global equities surged 20% and are up almost 7% this year, according to Bloomberg.
The findings prove that New York’s wealth is strong despite some of the city’s ultra-rich decamping to Florida in search of lower taxes and less restrictive pandemic lockdowns — so much so that the Sunshine State reportedly surpassed New York as the most valuable US housing market late last year.
In all, of the more than 545,000 people who left New York State in 2022, more than 91,000 relocated to Florida that same year.
As a result, luxury golf clubs in South Florida have in some cases doubled and tripled their membership rates since the pandemic, according to Financial Times.
In addition, a power shift has paved the way for a Wall Street South, according to Bloomberg.
Most notably, Carl Icahn’s Icahn Capital Management ditched its posh Manhattan digs atop Fifth Avenue’s General Motors Building in favor of a 14-story office complex in a Miami suburb in August 2020.
Hedge fund tycoon Paul Singer’s Elliott Management — which oversees a total of $59.2 billion after shaking up investment targets including AT&T, Twitter and the government of Argentina — also moved its headquarters from Midtown Manhattan to West Palm Beach, Fla., in October of that same year.
In all, 160 Wall Street firms have moved out of the Big Apple in recent years — 56 of which took their business to Florida, sucking a whopping $1 trillion in financial assets under management out of Manhattan.
The migration to Miami ranked it 33rd on the list of the city with the most millionaires in the world — up 78% over the past decade.
California’s Bay Area came in second overall behind New York. The Silicon Valley region, which includes San Francisco, Palo Alto and San Jose, has 305,700 people with a net worth exceeding $1 million.
Rounding out the top 10 were Tokyo, with 298,300 individuals — a figure that slid 5% over the past decade.
Singapore was fourth with 244,800, up 64%, and London was fifth with 227,000, down a whopping 10% from a decade ago, Bloomberg reported.
Los Angeles was the only other US city in the top 10, coming in sixth with 212,100 millionaires, an increase of 45% from 2013.
It was followed by the Paris area, Sydney, Hong Kong and Beijing, which has experience a 90% increase over the past decade.
