Richest Belgians much richer than thought

The wealthiest 1% of Belgians own 17% of the country’s wealth, much more than the amount previously established in a large-scale survey by the European Central Bank (ECB), write De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad.

New calculations by ECB economist Philip Vermeulen show that 1% of Belgians hold 17% of the wealth, not 12% as indicated in an earlier study carried out by the ECB. They are also twice as rich as previously thought: every family with more than €2.6 million belongs to the richest 1%.

Vermeulen did not conduct a survey for the recalculation, but instead based his findings on statistics from a number of previous academic studies.

Photo: Baron Albert Frère, Belgium’s richest man with a net worth of US$3.7 billion