Look around Toronto, because there are some seriously rich people walking (but more likely, flying in private jets or being driven in limos) among us.

So says the London-based wealth consultancy firm WealthInsight, which has found that 28 per cent of Canada’s millionaires live in the city of Toronto.

To be specific, Hogtown is home to 118,000 millionaires, 1,184 multimillionaires (defined as those with net assets of $30 million U.S. or more) and a mere five billionaires. All numbers exclude the worth of their primary residences.

“It’s the largest economy, it contributes a large portion of the GDP, and the population is the biggest,” said Andrew Amoils, senior analyst and head of the firm’s reports team.

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Those three factors, he said, explain why Toronto is Canada’s top city, when it comes to the number of rich residents.





The numbers also place the city 15th among the world’s top 20 millionaire and multi-millionaire havens. In the former category, Toronto is ahead of such cities as Chicago, Houston and Moscow. In the latter category, Toronto leaves Geneva, Shanghai and Los Angeles in the dust.

Toronto falls out of the top 20 in the billionaire rankings.





Terry Willis, vice-president at wealth management firm T.E. Wealth, says many of his clients are millionaires, and the firm has “probably 10 or 15 people” within the multi-millionaire range.

Those clients, he said, work in the financial industry, mining industry, are entrepreneurs and are executives with compensation plans that include stock options.

The numbers also make sense to Peter Viducis, manager of economic and cultural research for the city of Toronto.

Well-paid professionals and the heads of Canada’s major banks are among this city’s economic upper echelon, he said.

But when it comes to the peak of prosperity, Viducis noted that “you don’t get to be a billionaire by working for a living.”

Toyko boasts the most millionaires at 461,000. The most multimillionaires — 4,224 — live in London, England. But Manhattan is where those who are truly living it up, the billionaires, have settled. There are 70.

The numbers come from an analysis of WealthInsight’s database, which contains files on more than 60,000 millionaires. There are an estimated 16 million millionaires worldwide.

“We don’t have all of them, but we have a good sample,” Amoils said.

The firm looked at five years’ worth of data to determine where this planet’s wealthiest people live.

There were 422,000 millionaires in Canada in 2012, and Ontario is home to most of them — 198,000 millionaires live in this province, which represents 47 per cent of the country’s high rollers. Quebec is next in line, where just over 19 per cent of les millionnaires au Canada live.

By the numbers

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422,000: millionaires in Canada.

198,000: millionaires in Ontario.

118,000: millionaires in Toronto.

1,184: multimillionaires in Toronto.

5: billionaires in Toronto.