Living the good life

GLOBAL: What do Russia, Japan, Qatar, and Hong Kong have in common? The answer is wealth. More precisely: these countries are home to the wealthiest expats in the world.

Expatriates, or expats, are people who have moved abroad to live or work. Many are on foreign assignments for their companies. Some plan to return “home”, while others plan to stay in the foreign location. According to the Expat Explorer Survey, by HSBC Bank International, living abroad can be very comfortable indeed. Some 3,100 people in 30 countries and across 50 industries took part in the survey.

"The highest proportion (30 per cent) of expats earning more than $250,000 are in Russia," says the survey. Foreigners living in Hong Kong, Thailand and India were not far behind, where one in four expats earning more than $200,000 per year.

Nearly one in three expats in Russia earns more than $250,000 a year.

In Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, nearly all expats said they had increased their savings compared to what they had been able to save at home. At the same time, most expats in the Middle East are not planning on cutting back on buying luxury goods — they claim to feel few effects of the global recession.

The lowest-paid expats live in Australia and Belgium, says the report, with more than 60 per cent of them earning less than $100,000 per year. “We have seen some interesting trends in terms of how expats are reacting to the credit crunch,” commented Paul Say, head of marketing and communications for HSBC Bank International. “But what is also interesting to see is that they remain a wealthy group of individuals.”