Almost half a million Britons have more than $1 million (£500,000) in spare cash to invest, a new report on the rich has revealed.

The number of these high net worth individuals with $1 million in cash in addition to investments such as their homes rose by 36,500, or 8.1 per cent, to 485,580 last year. That was the fastest growth rate of any European country.

The 2007 World Wealth Report, from Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini, indicated that the number of ultra high net worth individuals – with $30 million or more to invest – in Britain rose by 10 per cent last year to about 3,750. About one in six of Europe’s 23,460 super-rich now hails from the UK.

Multimillionaires profited from moving their portfolios out of so-called alternative investments such as hedge funds and pouring more money into real estate.

Globally nearly 10,000 more individuals joined the ranks of the super-rich, taking the total to about 95,000. The United States still dominated, but Indians are the fastest growing group.

The World Wealth Report found that there were 9.5 million high net worth individuals jointly worth $37.2 trillion – a rise of 11.4 per cent over the figure for 2005.

A surge in the value of global stock markets last year meant that investors received poorer returns from investments such as hedge funds and other structured products, which tend to rely on volatility.

In 2005, some $20 out of every $100 allocated from the rich went into alternatives, but that allocation halved last year.

Meanwhile, allocations to real estate globally rose from $16 out of every $100 in 2005 to $24 in 2006. Real estate allocation this year and next is expected to ease back to 20 per cent, but that is still above the ten-year average.

New figures from Cushman & Wakefield, the property agency, revealed that nearly £5 billion worth of City offices changed hands in the second quarter of 2007 – a 40 per cent rise on last year.

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