Phew! The latest UBS Wealth Management Billionaire Ambitions Report should bring some joy to the art trade as it puts a rubbish year behind it (with its 29% drop in sale totals at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips in 2024).
According to the report—and I quote—“an increasingly bright spot is art and antiques, where almost a third (32%) plan to increase exposure more. That’s a significant rise from 11% in the previous year.”
The report is based on interviews with 82 UBS billionaire clients, plus tracking of the wealth of 2,500 billionaires, over a ten-year period until April 2024.
It contains some encouraging news and two surprises. It notes that billionaires are more mobile than ever before, seeking an excellent education for their (increasingly numerous) children, a safe environment and ease of doing business (New Zealand, anyone?). No surprises there, considering the geo-political upheavals in the world. The United Arab Emirates is attracting plenty of these relocators, and while the report is silent about this, could the lack of sanctions be a powerful incentive?
There are more billionaires in the world: UBS puts their number at 2,682 although it admits that the target is shifting all the time, due to changing exchange rates and so on. The mix has changed: there are fewer Chinese but many more Indians, for example. Tech still reigns supreme, with tech billionaires’ wealth tripling from $789bn in 2015 to $2.4tr in 2024. Real estate did not do so well.
But the two things I retained were signalled to me by Paul Donovan, the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management. “Just in the last year, for the first time, we are starting to see billionaires inheriting wealth rather than creating wealth,” he told me. “Of course, if you're inheriting wealth, it is likely to be in a more liquid form than if you're an entrepreneur and your assets are locked up in the business. That raises interesting questions for me,” he said.
We all know that it is easier to spend money we didn’t make ourselves; in 2024 there were more than 800 multi-generational billionaires. And the trend is only likely to continue as the Great Wealth Transfer progresses.
But the most gob-smacking finding was that women are becoming a force in the billionaire world. In the ten years from 2015 their number increased by 81%—mainly self-made fortunes. (In the same period the number of male billionaires increased by just 49%.)
These findings are partly explained by women living longer, with the wealth going sideways as their spouses leave the stage. But, Donovan says: “Primogeniture doesn't really work anymore, so you get more equitable division. We’re moving towards women controlling a majority of the wealth, not now, but within 20 years. Interestingly, 45% of UBS wealth management clients are women now. That number was about 40% eight years ago,” he concludes.
All of this could be very good news for the art market. As it is, women are some of the most significant collectors around. But look out as well for changes in the sort of artcollected. More Louise Bourgeois, less Georg Baselitz, perhaps?