More millionaires in NY or L.A.?

Ah, the perennial question in the perennial battle over which city is "best," whatever that means. A new study shows the NY metropolitan area having 667,200 people holding $1 million or more in investment assets in 2009. That tops any metro area in the country, by far, and it's a 19 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the consulting firm Capgemini. The L.A. metro area placed second, with 235,800 millionaires, up 13.3 percent. After L.A. comes Chicago, Washington, and SF. (Being a "millionaire" these days is not exactly the same as being "rich," but that's another story.) While all cities in the top 10 showed percentage increases from 2008, they were all down from 2007, before the recession started to be felt. Houston had the highest growth among the top 10; Detroit had the lowest, with L.A. the next-lowest.

Of course, numbers like these can be sliced and diced in all sorts of ways. The Capgemini report looked at MSAs, or Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Locally, that brings in much of L.A. and OC counties, but if you're looking at just counties, the results are likely to be different. Another consulting firm did a survey a couple of years ago that found L.A. County to have more millionaires than any other county in the nation. So it just depends. Anywhere, here are the top 10 MSAs:

1) New York
2) Los Angeles
3) Chicago
4) Washington D.C.
5) San Francisco
6) Philadelphia
7) Boston
8) Detroit
9) Houston
10) San Jose

Below is one of the charts from Capgemini. HNWI stands for High Net Worth Individuals.