Chinese Millionaires Are Leaving The Country In Droves

January 19, 2014 Leave a comment

Chinese Millionaires Are Leaving The Country In Droves

ROBERT FRANK, CNBC
JAN. 17, 2014, 1:15 PM 17,066 30

Do the wealthy Chinese know something we don’t?

A new report shows that 64 percent of Chinese millionaires have either emigrated or plan to emigrate—taking their spending and fortunes with them. The United States is their favorite destination.The report from Hurun, a wealth research firm that focuses on China, said that one-third of China’s super rich—or those worth $16 million or more—have already emigrated.

The data offer the latest snapshot of China’s worrying wealth flight, with massive numbers of rich Chinese taking their families and fortunes overseas. Previous studies show the main reasons rich Chinese are leaving is to pursue better educations for their kids, and to escape the pollution and overcrowding in urban China.

(Read more: 10 of the priciest views in America)

But analysts say there is another reason the Chinese rich are fleeing: to protect their fortunes. With the Chinese government cracking down on corruption, many of the Chinese rich—who made their money through some connection or favors from government—want to stash their money in assets or countries that are hard for the Chinese government to reach.

According to WealthInsight, the Chinese wealthy now have about $658 billion stashed in offshore assets. Boston Consulting Group puts the number lower, at around $450 billion, but says offshore investments are expected to double in the next three years.

A study from Bain Consulting found that half of China’s ultrawealthy—those with $16 million or more in wealth—now have investments overseas.

The mass millionaire migration out of China is also hitting luxury companies hard. Hurun said China’s luxury sales last year fell 15 percent—the biggest drop in over a half a decade. Spending on gifts, which made up a sizable portion of luxury sales, fell 25 percent.

Bentley Motors last week said that its sales in China slowed last year in part because of “the migration of high net worth individuals from China.”

(Read more: Super-luxury car sales fell in 2013. Blame China)

In other words, it isn’t that wealthy buyers in China are spending less—they’re just disappearing.

Most are looking for permanent residences, Hurun said. The United States was their top destination, which any real estate agent in San Francisco, Seattle or New York can confirm. Europe is their second favorite destination, followed by Canada, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment