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Billionaires love homes, art and living in Europe, global survey reports

In the most comprehensive survey conducted on the world's super rich, Hong Kong is in second place in terms of cities behind New York

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Hong Kong has 75 US-dollar billionaires who reside and primarily conduct their business here. Photo: AFP

The average billionaire has four homes worth nearly US$20 million each, an art collection worth US$14 million and is most likely to live in Europe, the inaugural Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census shows.

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But New York topped the list as the city with the most billionaires - 96. Hong Kong came in second, with 75 billionaires living and primarily conducting their business it the city, closely followed by Moscow with 74.

Beijing, in seventh place, was the top mainland city with 26 billionaires. It was followed by Shanghai, which ranked 16th with 19 billionaires, and Shenzhen in 19th spot with 16.

"There's really no such thing as an 'average' billionaire, but as we look at numbers, the average billionaire has a net worth of US$3 billion, cash equivalents of US$545 million, an average of 2.1 children, is 63 years of age and possesses luxury assets and personal holdings of US$136 million," Mykolas Rambus, the chief executive of Wealth-X, said yesterday.

"It's also worth noting that 15 per cent of billionaires have four children or more."

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The census was the first comprehensive worldwide study of billionaires. The global billionaire population reached a record 2,170 this year - "far more ever than identified or understood", Rambus said.

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