A bullish stock market has made the number of millionaire in Sweden return to the same level as before the financial crisis.

• Swedes richer than ever

The world's high net worth individuals regained ground last year despite weakness in the world economy, according to the annual World Wealth Report, released by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini.

The number of dollar millionaires increased more in Sweden than in most other European and Western countries. By the end of 2009 48,300 so called high net worth individuals lived in the Scandinavian country, an increase by more than 20 percent.

In other words; one out of every 200 Swedes is now a millionaire in US dollars.

The report came the day after the bank SEB said that Swede’s personal wealth has increased to its highest nominal level ever.

The increase is mainly explained by the bullish Stockholm stock exchange that rallied 45 percent last year – and the fact that Swedes have a larger share of stocks in their investment portfolio than most other Europeans.

The figures mean that number of millionaires in Sweden now is back at almost the same level as before the financial crisis begun. At the end of 2007 there were 50,900 millionaires in Sweden, which dropped by a quarter to 39,700 during the economic meltdown of 2008.

“The number of millionaires increased more in Sweden than many other European countries. But some Asian countries, such as China and India, showed even larges increases”, Robin Segerfeldt, head of wealth management practice at Capgemini Consulting in Stockholm, told The Swedish Wire.

The number of people across the world with investable assets of 1 million dollar or more (excluding primary residence, collectibles, consumables, and consumer durables) returned to 10 million and increased its wealth by 18.9 percent to 39 trillion dollar. So-called Ultra-HNWIs, with investable assets of $30 million or more, increased their wealth by 21.5 percent.

"The rebound has been, and will continue to be, driven by emerging markets -- especially India and China, as well as Brazil," said Bertrand Lavayssiere, managing director, Global Financial Services, Capgemini. "In fact, Asia-Pacific was the only region in which both macroeconomic and market drivers of wealth expanded significantly in 2009."

While the recovery was generally stronger in developing nations, most of the world's millionaires and wealth remained highly concentrated in the US, Japan and Germany, which together accounted for 53.5 percent of the world's millionaires last year. In oil-rich Norway the amount of millionaires was 74,900.