Billionaire wealth in the EU surges by nearly €400 million per day in 2024, with a new billionaire nearly every week

• 74% of billionaire wealth in the EU is derived from inheritance, monopoly power or crony connections.
• Richest 1% in 12 EU countries extracted €84.4 billion from the Global South in 2023.
• Oxfam predicts there will be at least 5 trillionaires worldwide a decade from now.
   

Today, Oxfam publishes “Takers Not Makers” as business elites gather in the Swiss resort town of Davos and, billionaire Donald Trump backed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is inaugurated as President of the United States. The report shows that globally, billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024 alone, at a rate three times faster than the previous year.

In the EU, billionaire wealth grew by €138 billion in the last year – equivalent to an increase of €376 million a day. At the end of 2024, billionaire wealth in the EU stood at €2.2 trillion with a total of 440 billionaires. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty globally has barely changed since 1990, according to World Bank data.

Last year, Oxfam predicted the emergence of the first trillionaire within a decade. However, with billionaire wealth accelerating at a faster pace, this projection has expanded dramatically — at current rates, the world is now on track to see at least five trillionaires within that timeframe.

This ever-growing concentration of wealth is enabled by a monopolistic concentration of power, with billionaires increasingly exerting influence over industries and public opinion. The report shines a light on how billionaire wealth worldwide is largely unearned - 60 percent of billionaire wealth now comes from inheritance, monopoly power or crony connections. In the EU, three out of every four euros comes from this type of unearned wealth, with sixty-nine percent just from inheritance.

“Billionaire wealth is exploding, and the bottom line is most wealth is not earned, it is inherited. Meanwhile, the number of people in poverty worldwide has barely budged since the nineties. EU leaders need to tax more the wealth of the super-rich, including inheritance. Without this, we risk seeing the gap between the ultra-rich and ordinary Europeans growing,” said Chiara Putaturo, Oxfam EU tax expert. 

The report shows also how not only unmerited wealth but also colonialism — in its historical and modern-day forms — stand as a driver of billionaire wealth accumulation worldwide.

Many of the super-rich, particularly in Europe, owe part of their wealth to historical colonialism and the exploitation of poorer countries. For example, the fortune of billionaire Vincent Bolloré, who has put his sprawling media ‘empire’ at the service of France's nationalist right, was built partly from colonial activities in Africa. This dynamic of wealth extraction persists today: in 2023, the richest 1% in 12 EU countries – including France, Germany and Spain - extracted nearly €10 million an hour from the Global South. They achieved this through the financial system and strong currencies, which allowed them to borrow at low costs and channel that wealth into investments in the Global South.