The Billionaires Of The World Lost A Total Of $388 Billion Last Year | Celebrity Net Worth 2026

A new report on the financial state of the world released in conjunction by Swiss bank UBS and auditing company PwC has come out, and among its interesting findings is a surprising tidbit about the collective wealth of the billionaire demographic on Earth. Over the course of 2018, the report states, the billionaires of the world saw a bite of about $388 billion from their collective wealth.

That's a drop of about 4.3 percent, and it came after five years of upward trends for billionaire wealth. Why did it happen? The report cites various economic conditions, like trade conflicts between the US and China and a generally volatile financial market, and in fact, it was the Asian region that was the leader in the year's downward trend. China alone saw its collective billionaire wealth sink by 12.3 percent in 2018, and about half of that decline can be chalked up to the Chinese yuan's depreciation against the dollar. China also saw the biggest number of lost billionaires to the economy's whims, with 48 people sinking below the billionaire water line and bringing the total number of billionaires in the country to 325. Of course, Asia is also home to the most billionaires of any region of the world, so it stands to reason they would potentially see the biggest losses as well.