The rapid ascent of the Vietnamese city highlights how the country, wracked by war for much of the post-1945 period, is now part of a rapidly expanding economy.

The data was compiled by New World Wealth, a research organisation. In descending order of percentage growth rates in millionaires, the cities are: Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Manila, Chennai, Melbourne, Sydney, Kolkata, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo and Osaka.

As the data for these cities excludes China, NWW produced a separate ranking for the country’s cities, showing that the overall growth in Chinese multimillionaires was more than 390 per cent from 2004-2014. The fastest growing city, with a rate of 450 per cent, was Fuzhou, now with 220 such persons. This was followed by Qingdao, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Tianjin.

Away from Asia
In other regions, data on the US showed that Houston, Texas, had the fastest such growth, of 63 per cent (3,690 multimillionaires), followed by Seattle, up 60 per cent, then San Jose, Dallas and San Francisco. In Latin America, Sao Paulo had the fastest growth, up 269 per cent, at 4,430 such persons, followed by Rio, up 251 per cent.

The study also noted that over the past 10 years, worldwide multimillionaire numbers expanded by 71 per cent; South America has had the standout performance as a region, at 265 per cent in total. The fastest growing developed market in terms of multimillionaires was Australia, up by more than 190 per cent.

Across the world, there are 13 million millionaires and about 495,000 multimillionaires - classed as persons with at least $10 million of net assets. At a country level, the US has the most resident multimillionaires, at 183,500. It is followed by China, at 26,600, and Germany, at 25,400.

Among cities, Hong Kong has the most multimillionaires, at 15,400, followed by New York City, at 14,300, and London, at 9,700.