Wealth creation in Italy and the UK lagged the rest of the world last year, according to the latest World Wealth Report published by today Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and Capgemini.

According to the report, the number of high net worth individuals, or those with a spare $1m to invest, rose by 8.3% to 10.9 million globally in 2010. Italy was the only country to suffer a drop in the number of its high net worth individuals, whose numbers declined by 4.7% to 170,000.