The number of French households with assets of more than $1 million jumped by 50,000 in 2023. With 827,000 millionaires, France ranks fifth in the world.
2023 was an excellent vintage for millionaires around the world. According to CapGemini’s annual study, in 2023 the world had nearly 23 million households with assets of more than 1 million dollars (920,000 euros excluding primary residence). This is 5% more than in 2022 and even an increase of 70% more over 10 years.
Together these millionaires have a record wealth of nearly 87,000 billion dollars, or more than 3 times the GDP of the United States.
A progression which is mainly explained by the surge in stock markets almost everywhere on the planet in an investor frenzy for artificial intelligence. In France, the CAC 40, for example, rose 17% in one year.
Which helped to swell the number of French millionaires. It was in France that the rich had the best year in Europe. There are 6.4% more millionaires over one year and overall wealth has grown in the same proportions.
France, big winner of Brexit
According to CapGemini, the number of French dollar millionaire households reached a record level in 2023 at 827,000, or 50,000 more in one year. A more significant increase than in Germany (+34,000), than in Italy (+26,000), than in Switzerland (+26,000), than in the Netherlands (+18,000), than in the United Kingdom (+ 16,000) or that in Spain (+14,000).
France is the fifth country in the world in terms of the number of millionaire households, far behind Germany or China, but now well ahead of the United Kingdom which has 200,000 fewer.
Brexit is also no stranger to this French surge and this British decline. Paris has become the fallback solution for the global banking elite who wish to leave London.
“Global financial institutions are moving their top management to Paris to demonstrate to regulators that they take them seriously,” explains Florence Carr, a Paris-based partner in EY’s Financial Services Office. “It’s the accumulation of full little things that are attractive like an upscale setting that have given Paris a bigger buzz than other places, like the fantastic level of international schools or the fact that you can board a train and be on the Côte d’Azur in about five hours.”
To this environment, we must obviously add a favorable evolution of the tax framework in recent years (abolition of the ISF, creation of the flat-tax, etc.) and an industrial take-off symbolized by an attractiveness which continues to weaken. For five years, France has been at the top of investment projects in Europe.
Towards a historic transfer of heritage
This accumulation of wealth at the global level will undoubtedly revive the debate on a global tax. At the G20 for example, Brazil and France are pushing for a minimum tax of 2% on the planet’s 3,000 billionaires which could bring in 250 billion dollars. A project which may not succeed, as the United States is not in favor of it.
What will certainly happen, however, is the transmission of this colossal heritage with the aging and disappearance of the baby boom generation.
In France, retirees hold 40% of total household assets even though they only represent 25% of the population.
This future transfer of assets is called a “great transfer” as the financial flow that will change hands is historic. According to CapGemini, 80,000 billion dollars will be transmitted globally in the next 20 years.
This will not fail to fuel the debate in the years to come on the role that the State should play in this transfer. Should we not intervene more than today or channel part of this windfall for social transfers?
The French are in any case mostly unfavorable to State intervention since according to an OpinionWay survey for Les Echos, almost three quarters of them (74%) consider inheritance taxes already too high in France and 66% are favorable to a reduction. Only 11% would like to increase them.
