Pandemic Wasn’t Bad for All – Worlds’ Richest Added New Billions to Their Wealth

The year 2020 was critical for the whole mankind in terms of health fears, as well as concerns over personal wealth, Reuters reported. However, the world crisis was not equally bad for everyone. The world's wealthiest have managed to explore the opportunity caused by the Covid-19 turmoil and added new billions to their bank accounts. The world is stuck in the worst recession since WWII, but even that was explored as an opportunity.

"The stock market crashed a year ago, by July or so my portfolio was back where it was before, at the beginning of the year, and now it's far higher," Morris Pearl, a former managing director at BlackRock who chairs Patriotic Millionaires, a group that believes the high net worth should do more to close the wealth gap told Reuters. "The fundamental problem is this gross inequality that's getting worse."

"It's quite evident that the bill is coming for everybody," said Rob Weeber, CEO at Swiss wealth manager Tiedemann Constantia, who said some clients were also considering selling major assets like businesses before tax rates rise.

In the United States, the election of Joe Biden as president, and anticipated higher taxes for the rich, have in particular triggered a sharp increase in demand from clients to set up trusts, according to wealth managers. This would allow them to pass along money to children or other relatives under the current $11.7 million tax-free threshold per person. During his campaign, Biden proposed to return to 2009 levels, when the exemption stood at $3.5 million.

"We saw a surge of trusts created and funded in Q4 of last year," said Alvina Lo, chief wealth strategist at Wilmington Trust. "The vast majority of our clients adopted a wait-and-see approach until the election in November, and...