Nearly half – 46 per cent – of US millionaires do not feel wealthy, in spite of having an average of $3.5m in investable assets and $306,000 in annual household income, a recent survey showed. That is more than twice as many as a year ago, when 19 per cent of respondents said they did not feel wealthy. The Fidelity Millionaire Outlook, which polled more than 1,000 people with investable assets of at least $1m, excluding retirement accounts and property, found that those who did not feel wealthy began to feel so at $1.8m of investable assets. The median asset level needed to feel wealthy was $7.5m.

Lakshmi Mittal, the London-based Indian billionaire industrialist, lost nearly £17bn ($27bn) of his wealth in the past year but remains the richest man in the UK, according to the 2009 Sunday Times Rich List, published in April. Mittal is now worth £10.8bn.