SPORTS DIRECT AND TO THE POINT

06 NEWS WEDNESDAY 8 JUNE 2016
CITYAM.COM
A million British
households set
to be worth £1m
WILLIAM TURVILL
@WTurvill
THE UK is close to having one million
millionaire households, new research
out yesterday showed.
In 2015, there were 961,000 UK
households with $1m (£700,000) of private
financial wealth, up 12.4 per cent
on 2014, according to the Boston
Consulting Group (BCG).
The UK’s millionaire growth is
nearly double the global year-on-year
rate of increase, six per cent, and also
ahead of the Western Europe average,
11 per cent.
The UK is the country with the
fourth largest number of millionaires,
behind the US (which has an
estimated eight million, flat on 2014),
China (2.1m, up 27.3 per cent) and
Japan (1.1m, up 8.3 per cent).
The BCG report looks at private
financial wealth, which is in cash and
deposits, mutual funds, listed and
unlisted equities, debt securities, life
insurance payments and pension entitlements.
It does not include investors’ residences
and luxury goods. In the UK,
total private wealth grew by 3.6 per
cent to $9.3 trillion.
The report estimated that million -
aire households will hold more than
half of all global private wealth by
2020, up from 47 per cent in 2015 to 52
per cent.
Elsewhere, the report advised wealth
managers to target a growing number
of millennial investors.
Millennials, defined as those born
between 1980 and 2000, currently
account for 10 per cent of global private
wealth, according to the BCG.
This proportion is forecast to increase
to 16 per cent by 2020.
The report said millennials are
“highly sensitive to competitive and
transparent pricing, sceptical, carry
out their own proactive research, and
require transparency and digital capability
in their wealth managers”.
Boss Marissa Mayer could pocket $55m from a sale of Yahoo’s core internet business
Verizon planning second-round
bid for Yahoo’s internet assets
BILLY BAMBROUGH
@BillyBambrough
US TELECOMS giant Verizon is
readying a second-round bid for
Yahoo’s core internet business.
The bid is expected to come in
ahead of the Monday deadline and
will value the business at around
$3bn (£2bn), some $2bn under
expectations, it was reported by the
Wall Street Journal.
Yahoo’s core business, which
makes up only a fraction of its $35bn
market capitalisation, is suffering
from declining revenues, down by 18
per cent in the first quarter.
This round is not thought to be
the final one, however, with at least
one more likely before a deal is done.
UK challenger
banks lose out
to the big boys
LYNSEY BARBER
@lynseybarber
AMBITIOUS digital challenger
banks hoping to topple the big high
street players will take “years” to
make money, according to one of
the founders of a mobile bank
which hopes to do just that.
Entrepreneur Tom Blomfield is
the founder and chief executive of
the yet to launch digital bank
Mondo which recently became the
fastest ever crowdfunded business.
He told City A. M. that several other
challenger banks such as
Shawbrook and Metro Bank, which
have already gone public, are
“selling themselves short”, simply
offering traditional banking at a
lower cost. “It will take time for
others who are truly changing
banking to make money,” he said.
The opportunity to cash in from
people’s distrust of established
banks will eventually come from
areas such as data insights and
identity, he said, speaking at the
Payexpo conference in London. He
revealed that Mondo, which is
awaiting its full banking licence
from regulators, would move
towards loans and deposits in
future.