HUMAN INTEREST : Female millionaires

In the last 24 hours, TV and radio stations have given considerable airtime
to the forecast that the number of female millionaires in the UK is set to
rocket. And that the number of female millionaires will overtake male
millionaires by 2020.

At present, 40% of millionaires are women but the Centre for Economics and
Business Research (CEBR) have done a bit of crystal ball gazing and is
predicting that this figure will increase to 53% by 2020.

The CEBR believes the main driving forces behind this trend are increased
divorce settlements, the fact that women outlive their husbands (the ones
they haven't divorced I presume!) and greater ownership of property and
shares.

But there's no mention of the fact that more women are starting and running
their own businesses. Surely the fact that there are more women running
successful businesses means that more of them will become millionaires in
the process.

In the first quarter of this year 20,600 women started a new business. This
was up from 16,700 for the same period in 2005 - a considerable increase
of almost 25%.

It also seems that women are more likely to run a profitable business -
with 58% of female company directors involved with profitable businesses,
compared to 56% of of male directors.

from www.business121.co.uk