R&I – FS
ZURICH/LONDON (Reuters) – In 2020, as the world convulsed under COVID-19 and the global economy faced its worst recession since World War II, billionaires saw their riches reach new heights.
Now some are talking to their wealth managers about how to keep a hold of and consolidate their fortunes amid the global debris of the pandemic. Others are discussing how to preempt and navigate demands from governments, and the wider public, to pick up their share of the recovery costs.
“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,” said 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.
“The fundamental problem is this gross inequality that’s getting worse.”
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Yet for UK-based millionaire Gary Stevenson, a former trader at Citibank, any plan to tackle inequality must include a wealth tax.
“We live in a situation right now where billionaires often pay lower rates of tax on their income than ordinary workers,” he said. “But I don’t think it will be enough just simply to tax their income … it needs taxes that apply on wealth.”
Derek