CHICAGO — A new report puts the number of local billionaires at 21, placing Chicago among the top 20 cities worldwide for the super rich.
However, Chicago's total is only good enough for 13th place in the world. The global leader, New York, has more than four times the number of billionaires, with 96.
Hong Kong (75 billionaires), Moscow (74), London (67), Mumbai (30) round out the top five list of cities, according to the Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2013.
Six in 10 billionaires worldwide are self-made, 20 percent inherited their fortunes, and 20 percent used a significant inheritance to become billionaires, the report says.
The survey's city count was based on where a billionaire's primary business address was located.
Ken Griffin, 45, founder and CEO of Chicago-based global investment firm Citadel LLC, is listed as Chicago's wealthiest person by Forbes magazine, with a worth of $4.1 billion.
Griffin, who grew up in Boca Raton, Fla., reportedly used $265,000, including money from his grandmother, to start his first fund as a teenager. A math whiz, he traded stocks in college, reportedly using a satellite dish he installed outside his Harvard dorm room.
The Tribune reported that last November he purchased a 7,900-square-foot unit at Park Tower, 800 N. Michigan, for $15 million, a record price for a Chicago condo. The unit has four bathrooms, five half-baths, a private terrace and three garage spaces, the Tribune said.
Chicago magazine has said he also owns properties in New York, Aspen and Hawaii.
His marriage to Anne Dias, another hedge fund manager, in 2003 featured performances by Cirque du Soleil and Donna Summer. The couple collects fine art. In 2006, they bought the Jasper Johns painting "False Start" for $80 million from Hollywood mogul David Geffen.
Rarely interviewed, the couple has donated millions to the Art Institute of Chicago. He once explained how he and his wife had visited the museum on one of their first dates. "For us, our relationship with this great encyclopedic museum can be described as 'love at first sight,' " he said in 2006.
Overall, the global billionaire population rose by 0.5 percent last year, the Wealth-X report said. Europe had the most, with 766 billionaires.
The number of billionaires in the world has grown 60 percent since since March of 2009, which the study marked as the bottoming out of the global financial crisis. There are now 2,170 billionaires in the world, the report said.
