Billionaire wealth soared in 2025, according to Oxfam, rising more than 16 per cent to a record $18.3 trillion (€15.6 trillion). It sounds startling, but the explanation may be more prosaic than the outrage suggests.
Start with the numbers. Global equities had a strong year in 2025. When stocks rise, wealth rises mechanically and it rises fastest at the top, where equity ownership is most concentrated. That is not a policy scandal so much as arithmetic. If Nvidia or Alphabet surge, billionaire fortunes jump in eye-catching absolute terms.
However, so do Irish and global pension funds and ordinary retirement accounts. Oxfam says the Trump administration “contributed to the growth of AI-related stocks that have provided a boon to super-rich investors worldwide”.
Again, those same “AI-related stocks” also sit at the core of pension portfolios. Rising stocks can lead to uncomfortable optics, but the beneficiaries extend far beyond the super-rich.
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Second, the report risks the same mistake certain narcissistic politicians – well, one narcissistic politician – often make: assuming governments run markets that are in reality largely driven by earnings, interest rates and technological change.
Oxfam’s emphasis on the speed of wealth gains, with billionaire fortunes reportedly growing three times faster than the average pace of the previous five years, also deserves context. Those five years included the pandemic, inflation shocks, rate hikes and 2022’s bear market. Against that backdrop, a calmer year with falling rate expectations and ongoing AI enthusiasm was always going to stand out.
The report tends to implicitly slide from “billionaire wealth rose” to “the system is broken”. That may be partly true, particularly where vast wealth translates into disproportionate political influence or control over critical platforms, a point underlined by Elon Musk’s ownership of X.
However, in a year when markets performed strongly, rising paper wealth was almost guaranteed – striking, perhaps, but not surprising.
