A RECORD number of Australians has joined the millionaires' club, with a new cashed-up crowd of entrepreneurs emerging from the global financial crisis.
More than 180,000 Australians can now count seven digits in their personal fortunes. That is a 7 per cent increase on the 168,700 recorded at the dawn of the GFC in the summer of 2008, according to Capgemini and Merrill Lynch wealth figures.
At the height of the GFC, more than 40,000 Australians officially lost their vaunted status of millionaire as share markets collapsed.
Now they are back. And they've brought some loaded friends -- who have not made it big on the share market.
Property and entrepreneurship have become the chief avenues to new riches.
Capital city property prices rose by more than 20 per cent in the 12 months preceding April 2009, elevating many to millionaire status on their bricks and mortar alone.
However, according to self-made millionaire and Australian Businesswomen's Network director Suzi Dafnis, entrepreneurship has risen to the fore.
"Even in a downward cycle, there are always people making money," she said.
"Australians have been sheltered from the worst of the GFC and we've had a great real estate market.
"Entrepreneurship is a solid, fast-track way of building great wealth.
"When you have your own business, the sky is the limit."
Lisa Messenger, a creative publishing and marketing executive at her own Messenger Group, whose business and property portfolio recently delivered her millionaire status, said: "When I was growing up, the word millionaire seemed synonymous with having 'made it'.
"But 20 years on, take the rise of entrepreneurship, a global economy, throw in a dose of tenacity, calculated risk and a whole lot of fun, and becoming a millionaire is a playground now open to anyone."
At the highest reaches of the wealth tree, however, the growth is far slower.
While there was a millionaire created every 50 minutes in Australia in the past 12 months, the number of billionaires here remains at 30, down from 38 in 2008.
As a nation, our collective private sector wealth stands at a cool $5.77 trillion, according to recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That equates to a record average of $259,500 a person.
COMMONWEALTH BANK CHIEF POCKETS A COOL $16.2M
FOR every minute Commonwealth Bank customers were forced to queue in his branches last financial year, chief executive Ralph Norris pocketed $31.
The bank chief has taken excessive corporate pay rises to dizzying new heights, with the bank confirming yesterday its commander-in-chief was given a mammoth $16.2 million for the past financial year.
The windfall was a 76 per cent pay rise on the mere $9.2 million he received the previous year, and elevated the Kiwi-born bank chief to the title of Australia's highest-paid chief executive.
But it wasn't only Mr Norris who reaped a harvest from the bank's record $5.66 billion profit, with its dozen high-ranking executives sharing a kitty of $64.5 million, a 62 per cent rise on the previous year.
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