A pedestrian outside the UBS headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, on September 15, 2011. Peter Frommenwiler/Bloomberg/Getty Images/FILE London —

The number of billionaires worldwide – and their combined wealth – reached record highs this year, buoyed in particular by gains in tech stocks, Swiss bank UBS has found.

The world had 2,919 billionaires on April 4, when UBS completed that part of its research, the largest number since the bank started collecting the data in 1995.

“With tech shares and financial asset prices generally rising, despite volatility, billionaires’ total wealth reached a new high,” UBS wrote in its annual report on billionaires published Thursday.

The MSCI World Index – which tracks more than 1,300 large and mid-sized public companies in developed markets

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