The 2015 Billionaires Report, jointly² released by UBS andPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), said that Asia for the first time had more self-made dollar-billionaires than Europe.

 

In total, 917 self-made billionaires generated more than $3.6 trillion of wealth globally between 1995 and 2014. Asia accounted for 36%, second only to the U.S. 

 

"We are very optimistic that in the next five to 10 years [the number of] Asian billionaires will surpass the U.S, because of the high-growth opportunities in this part of the world," Francis Liu, a managing director at UBS Wealth Management, told CNN.

 

While members of the billionaire population typically exhibit similar character traits - namely, an appetite for clever risk-taking, an obsessive³ focus on business and a strong work ethic⁴ - they have built their wealth in different ways. 

 

In Asia, almost 20% of all self-made billionaires created their wealth from the consumer sector⁵, followed by real estate that made up 13%. 

 

At a media briefing, Zhang Lijun, managing partner of PwC China Financial Service Consulting, said China’s wealth expansion is mainly due to the fever in setting up businesses and the booming capital market, Global Times said. 

 

In the U.S., however, the financial services sector was the top manufacturer of self-made billionaires, accounting⁶ for 30%. 

 

Self-made billionaire population in Asia is unique, the report said, because wealth creation in the region is more recent than in other parts of the world. Asian billionaires are generally younger than billionaires elsewhere, having an average age of 57, which is 10 years junior to U.S. and European billionaires.

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