Wealth Preservation Strategies Of The Rich

Wealth Preservation Strategies Of The Rich

By The Investor

Protecting your wealth for the future

You and I are advised to put our money into simple portfolios and to invest in shares for the long-term for our retirement.   But once the preservation of wealth becomes more important than growing it, other strategies come into play.    The preservation of wealth for the super-rich usually entails:

Wide diversification at the expense of higher returns - Reduced volatility - A focus on real assets such as property and gold - Investment in illiquid and unlisted securities and companies - Paranoia over taxes

In fact, I doubt there’s a rich person in the world getting by with an index tracker, a savings account, and a wodge of Government bonds.

Risky businessmen

Firstly, let’s define the sort of millionaires we’re talking about.

I’m thinking riches well beyond the standard Millionaire Next Door variety. Rather, I’m discussing the sort of people who populate the lower reaches of the Sunday Times Rich List.

Let’s say a net worth greater than £10 million/ $15 million.

Now, not all these very rich people practice the preservation of wealth through diversification. Many self-made entrepreneurs retain a huge slug of the businesses they founded, for example. This makes their net worth very dependent on the day-to-day value of those businesses.

Take Bill Gates. The world’s sometime richest man has diversified into everything from biotech firms to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to Corbis, his digital picture library. Yet despite selling millions of Microsoft shares every quarter, he is still the company’s biggest single shareholder. His 8% holding is worth $17 billion. If Microsoft goes bust, Gates will plunge down the rich list.

The insanely rich like Gates, Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim – the Mexican tycoon who’s currently the world’s richest man – can afford to take their chances. While in percentage terms the wealth tied up in their businesses is huge, the lesser share of money held outside is still enough to ensure a very prosperous lifestyle, whatever happens to their core company.

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