In the list of the richest people in the world published by Forbes magazine recently, a trend stood out: faces of unknown young people.
Many of them They haven’t even started working or they have chosen their career, but they have had a lot of help to get there, because for the first time since 2009, all billionaires under 30 who appear in the classification inherited his fortune.
Of the 25 billionaires aged 33 or younger in the publication, only seven built their own wealth.
For Forbes, the massive presence of young heirs It is a sign that a long-anticipated phenomenon is underway in the world of global finance: the “great transfer of wealth”a period in which much of all the wealth of the world’s rich will pass from one generation to the next.
It is estimated that until the end of 2029, more than US$8.8 billion They will go from the current billionaires to their young successors.
“And we are not just talking about money, but also about companies,” lawyer Yuri Freitas, a manager of the estate planning team at the Swiss bank UBS, explains to BBC Brazil.
With 15 years of experience in the area, Freitas agrees with the diagnosis that the great transfer of global wealth is already underway at an accelerated pace, and the world’s billionaires are beginning to pass their wealth to the next generation at an every age. earlier time.
Clash of generations
For Ken Costa, author of The 100 Trillion Dollar Wealth Transfer (The wealth transfer of 100 trillion dollars) and one of the most knowledgeable voices of the phenomenon, it is clear that “never before so much money -in real estate, land, shares and participations- had changed so suddenly from one generation to another”.
“And never before has the next generation had such different visions about the future of the planet and capitalism compared to their predecessors,” explains the South African banker and philanthropist in an article published last year.
His main thesis, being a boomer billionaire himself, is that young people, excluded from the wealth that older generations have enjoyed for so long, are disgusted with current capitalism.
What’s more, they blame the boomers (born in the period 1946-1965) to destroy the planet in an unbridled race to get rich in the short term. In Costa’s opinion, the boomers They made things worse because of their arrogance and resistance to change.
“The zmillennials [namehecoinedtorefertoyoungpeople[nombrequeacuñóparareferirsealosjóvenesmillennials born between 1981 and 1996, plus the Generation Zbetween 1997 and 2013]will inherit capital resources, power and influence, and technology will be the tool they use to implement their philosophy,” he predicts.
“There is no way to escape this seismic event and, in fact, the transfer has already begun and is accelerating rapidly. And this will not happen in isolation. It will also create a domino effect in the economy, technology and culture. What comes out of these changes depends on the new generation.”
“What I hope is that they achieve a stable and prosperous financial future, and I think it is essential that we boomers help make that happen,” says Costa.
Inequality sign
This new wave of young billionaire heirs expected in the coming decades comes at a time in history when the concentration of income in the hands of a few families It is making life worse for the majority of the world’s population.
The Inequality SA report, published earlier this year by Oxfam, notes that the wealth of the world’s five biggest billionaires has doubled since 2020, while that of the 60% of the world’s population -about 5,000 million people- has decreased in the same period.
While seven in ten of the world’s largest companies have billionaires as CEOs or major shareholders, only 0.4% of the world’s 1,600-plus largest and most influential companies have publicly committed to paying their workers a decent wage.
The impact of such income inequality is overwhelming, the publication highlights.
“The 2020s, which began with the Covid-19 pandemic and then saw the escalation of conflicts, the acceleration of the climate crisis and the rising cost of life, appears to be becoming a decade of division,” the document states. .
“Poverty in low-income countries is even higher than in 2019. Around the world, prices exceed wages and hundreds of millions of people are struggling,” the text warns.
Daniel Duque, researcher in the applied economics area of FGV Ibre (Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation), explains that this effort by the super-rich to transmit their heritage to future generations may be a reaction to recent initiatives in several countries. to debate and implement more progressive tax models, after decades of generous rates for billionaires.
This movement has grown, fueled mainly by the visibility given to the work of the French economist Thomas Piketty, who defends reparations in the capitalist system capable of interrupting this process of concentration of wealth.
“There is a movement in several countries in favor of greater taxation on large fortunes, which generates pressure on the super-rich to pass it on to the next generation,” says Duque.
Another debate that could put pressure on this public is the one that is taking place in the G20 around the creation of a global tax on large fortunes.
“A tax of this type would make it much more difficult for the super-rich to generate this inheritance without tax. Because until then, when a tax was collected, the money migrated elsewhere,” says the researcher.
Such concentration of income entails economic and political risks for the planet, says Duque, as well as a very unfavorable asymmetry of opportunities for those who have less money.
“One of the main risks is how to deal with such concentrated power in the hands of so few. In the past, the ability of the richest to influence politics was more limited, with less ability to operate in the ins and outs of power. With high concentration, this is starting to change and vWe are individuals capable of changing the course”, it states.
What do the young heirs think?
As in any generational debate, professionals from all fields have tried to predict the behavior of these young heirs and the changes they will cause in the business world.
Especially banks, which risk losing customers whose wealth they have helped build and share for decades.
It is known that the new generation of billionaires is more socially connected, more digital and, at least in their speech, cares more than his parents about the positive impact his investments will have on the planetboth climatic and social.
A report by the consulting firm EY estimates that investors millennials They are twice as willing to invest in companies or funds that seek social and environmental change.
Furthermore, 17% of millennials say they want to invest in companies that adopt high-quality ESG (environmental, social and governance) practices, compared to 9% among non-investors millennials.
Can we expect billionaires to generate positive changes for the world, which suffers, among other problems, from the enormous concentration of income in the hands of a few families?
The UBS report points out that, although there are several high-profile cases of billionaire businessmen who promise donate a large part of his fortune to the philanthropyit is less known that heirs are more reticent about this possibility.
“While more than two-thirds (68%) of first-generation billionaires stated that pursuing their philanthropic goals and making an impact on the world was the primary goal of their legacy, less than a third (32%) of generations heiresses expressed the same intention,” the study notes.
In UBS’s experience, successor generations They are often reluctant to donate money they have not earned and, in some cases, they may simply continue investing in existing family foundations.
“However, there is a trend to invest in or manage companies in ways that address environmental and social issues, both for commercial and altruistic purposes,” the report notes.
The bank’s investigation heard from some of these heirs.
“As much as my father worked in the oil, gas and mining sector, I am trying to reorient the entire business towards issues related to technology, areas that have less impact on the environment,” a billionaire from second generation.
“But I’m not going to sell all these businesses in one day. It is a journey that I started several years ago, when I took over the family businesses,” she concluded.
*Based on the report by Ligia Guimarães for BBC News Brazil
Click here to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.
You can also follow us on Youtube, instagram, YoukTok, x, Facebook and on our new channel WhatsAppwhere you will find breaking news and our best content.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.
- The US$100 billion club: who are the 14 people with the most gigantic fortunes in the world
- Delphine Arnault, the heiress of the richest man in the world who will now run Dior