The Countries With The Most Billionaires And Their Richest Citizens | Forbes

The ultra-rich are everywhere. The 2,640 billionaires on Forbes’ 2023 ranking of the world’s wealthiest people hail from 77 countries or territories around the globe, up from 75 last year.

The two new additions are Panama and Armenia, each of which added one billionaire: Stanley Motta, a Panamanian investor whose portfolio of Latin American companies includes Panamanian bank Banco General, joins the list, as does Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian investment banker and politician who made his fortune in Russia during the 1990s (and who last year renounced his Russian citizenship). He returns after dropping off the 2022 list.

The U.S. again reigns as home to the most billionaire citizens, with 735–the same number as last year. Despite nearly 50 Americans, including Kanye West and Sam Bankman-Fried, dropping from the ranks and another dozen dying, more than 60 U.S. citizens joined the billionaire ranks for the first time this year, including LeBron James and Tiger Woods. The U.S. is no longer home to the richest person in the world–luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, a citizen of France, overtook Elon Musk for the title–but America still claims 17 of the world’s 25 richest people. In all, U.S. billionaires are worth a collective $4.5 trillion, down from $4.7 trillion last year as markets retreated, billion-dollar “unicorn” startups stumbled and rising interest rates haunted investors.

China boasts the second-most billionaires, with 495 (not including citizens of Hong Kong and Macau) who have a combined $1.67 trillion. They, too have, had a down year overall–in 2022, there were 539 Chinese billionaires worth $1.96 trillion. The country’s zero-Covid policies and rocky transition to a post-pandemic economy lowered economic growth and hit stock prices. A crisis in China’s property sector, driven by a glut of real estate after decades of nonstop development, also weighed on China’s economic outlook. So has the Communist Party’s recent crackdown on big tech platforms. Notable Chinese drop-offs include e-cigarette tycoon Xiong Shaoming and Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup, a Chinese government-backed semiconductor business. Zhao was reported to have "disappeared" from public view in mid-2022, and was charged with corruption in March 2023.

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