The World Wealth Report issued jointly by Cap Gemini and Merrill Lynch has just come out for 2010 with some big surprises. We’ll have much more about the details of the report in later posts. But the headline is the surprise recovery in wealth from 2008-2009.

To put it bluntly, there are still a lot of rich people in the world due to asset reflation in 2009. The report defines a High Net Worth Individual (HWNI) as someone with unencumbered assets of $1m or more. That’s $1m in cash to spend or invest beyond what’s tied up in real estate, consumer durables and collectibles.

From the chart, you can see that the 10 million HWNI are about the same as 2007’s 10.1m. The Ultra HWNI category (free assets of $30, or more) is down from those 2007 highs but still robust.

The 14th Annual World Wealth Report 2010 (Cap Gemini)