The study, titled ‘Global Wealth and Family Ties: A Worldwide Study of How Fortunes Are Founded, Managed and Passed On’ examined the fortunes of 1,253 UHNWI, as determined by the 2011 Forbes Billionaires ranking.
Family involvement in business was compared across industries, countries and regions, with family involvement being defined as at least one relative being involved in a significant way in the business.
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Further, 21 billionaires in total from Kuwait, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were measured for the study.
Billionaires studied included the two Alghanim brothers and the three Al-Kharafi brothers from Kuwait, four Hariri brothers, sons of the assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the two Mikati brothers from Lebanon and Abdul Aziz and his uncle Saif Al Ghurair, and brothers Majid and Abdulla Al Futtaim from Emirates. Saudi Arabia was the region having largest number of billionaires, including brothers Mohamed, Abdullah and Sulaiman Bin Issa Al Jaber.
It was found out that in the Middle East and in India, cultural reasons, rather then economic reasons were cited as the mail reason for running family business, though the impulse to run a family business was found to be natural for an Arab.
While all the Middle Eastern billionaires are male and few of the family members involved in the business are female, most of the fortunes are inherited by older male relatives, with only 38% of fortunes being self-made.
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By GlobalDataThe number and the nature of the billionaires in the region was shown to be relatively unchanged despite the Arab Spring of 2011, with there being three more Kuwaiti billionaires in 2012 than in 2011 and the same billionaires in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The Forbes Billionaires list for 2012 shows seven billionaires in Egypt, three in Morocco, thirteen in Israel and 34 in Turkey.
No billionaires were shown to be in the other Middle Eastern countries, and the only female billionaires were found in Israel and Turkey.
