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Tel Aviv is second richest city in Mideast, 10% of residents are millionaires

1 out of 10 Tel Aviv residents are millionaires, with only Dubai beating the “white city” in the number of its millionaire residents.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Tel Aviv has the second-highest percentage of residents who are millionaires of any city in the Middle East, according to a wealth report published Thursday.

Henley & Partners, a firm that tracks global wealth migration, wrote that 42,400 of the city’s inhabitants have assets worth at least a million dollars. Of those, 2,260 are worth over $10 million, 118 have over $100 million, and an even dozen are billionaires. This marks a growth of 7,200 millionaires since 2018.

With a current population of 434,000, this means that just under 10% of Tel Aviv’s denizens are what is known in the investment world as High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI).

The only city in the region that outstrips Israel’s business capital in this category is Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE’s Abu Dhabi, Qatar’s Doha and Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh round out the top five.

Overall, Tel Aviv accounts for just about half of the country’s list of the super-wealthy.

While many of these moguls, especially in high tech and real estate, are full-time residents, not all of those considered in the report as Israeli due to their citizenship really make their homes in Israel. For example, Israel-born Dr. Miriam Adelson, widow of real-estate tycoon Sheldon Adelson, the country’s richest citizen with an estimated net worth of $27.5 billion, lives mostly in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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There are several Jewish Russian oligarchs who live primarily in Europe, although they have Israeli passports as well, such as Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, who headed the European Jewish Congress until he resigned in April after being sanctioned for his close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to Forbes, as of this month, the hundred wealthiest Israelis are worth some $274 billion, which is more than half of the country’s GDP.

Worldwide, the most millionaires live in New York – 345,600 of them, as of June, with 59 of them being billionaires.

In fact, five of the top ten cities are in the USA. But not all are in the West. Singapore comes in fifth, while communist China’s Beijing and Shanghai are in the ninth and tenth spots, respectively.

The report said that Israel does rank ahead of the U.S. in at least one category this year. Henley & Partners projects that Israel will be fourth in receiving an inflow of wealthy citizens.

Some 2,500 are expected to relocate to the country in 2022, joining the 107,000 who already live there. In contrast, the U.S. ranks sixth in this grouping.