[towlejunior]

Total global wealth is $250 trillion. British mutual funds can't be one-fifth of it, no matter how well invested.

[foota]

Thanks for the reality check. aab0 seems to have the right of it, they cite a different article that goes into more detail about the funds in question http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/business/dealbook/3-more-p...

edit: I'm still wrong, but it seems British mutual funds are an appreciable fraction of total global wealth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_institutional_investor...)

double ninja edit: that's not right. I don't really understand what the figures on that page are supposed to represent... anyone want to try clearing it up for me?

[zhte415]

I will clear it up for you: The numbers on that page are meaningless and misleading.

Firstly, the AUM column in the table doesn't represent anything. It overstates their _global_ AUM by 2 to 20 times for the companies I checked.

Secondly, this is by no means an exhaustive list of institutional investors in the UK. There are, well, I don't know but there are a huge number of small nameless investors sitting in the UK investing private funds globally, that are not and never will be on this list and whose assets will never be known, only estimated.

[dosgonlogs]

You do know that City of London (separate entity from London) is the Financial Capital of the world (a clear cut above New York or Hong Kong)? 1/5 sounds correct to me, if maybe even a bit too low. You completely underestimate the amount of global investors that would choose British Mutual Funds for their portfolio on account of the above fact.

[towlejunior]

I'm familiar with the moniker. I don't contest it. I still don't believe it represents 20% of global wealth. For one thing, if 20 trillion GBP, twice the U.S. GDP, had left the global economy in a week's time, we wouldn't even need to argue the point. It would be the only story on the news.

[eru]

Interesting. Where is that number from?

I can imagine it comes with a ton of caveats. I don't think it's easy to put eg a value on towns or entire countries.

(It's a shame we no longer see trades in sovereignty to observe prices from, eg like the Louisiana or Alaska purchase. But the wealth is still there.)