There are rich lists and there are even richer lists.

There’s the London Sunday Times annual table of the UK’s top 1,000 richest, with steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal topping the pile with almost £20 billion ($44 billion).

Forbes has more than one rich list. There’s the 100 billionaires one and the Forbes 400.

To make bank on this one, qualification is US$1.3 billion ($2 billion).

Asia has its own very wealthy with the top positions held by two business families, the Lis and the Kwoks.

The Arabian Business World’s most monied 50 also charts risers, fallers and newcomers. Currently, it’s not how much you’ve made, but how much you’ve lost.

In our own little modest corner, the people with much means were gathered at the top of Singapore’s tallest hotel, Swissotel Stamford, in the New Asia Bar for the launch of Singapore Tatler Society magazine.

The annual title contains 21 pages devoted to Singapore’s top 300 – captains of industry, maverick businessmen, bright young things and old guards of society.

In his short welcome to the well-dressed well-heeled, the publication’s managing director Mr Gilbert Cheah urged the crowd to “continue spending” (shades of SMGohChokTong).

Mr Cheah said, “If people think the worst, they will act and react in ways that will only make the worst come true.”

He recognised that more than most, “the people in this room have the means to continue buying and to support businesses”.

So go ye forth and multi-buy, people!

The people in the room included women’s advocate and lawyer Dr Anamah Tan, entrepreneur and youth advocate Elim Chew, fertility specialist Dr Christopher Chen and sleb Dick Lee.

Also present were MP Penny Low, company CEO Douglas Benjamin and wife Odile, internationally-renown investment guru and now Singapore resident Jim Rogers with wife Paige Parker.

Space was such a premium – the 70th floor view and finger food lived up to the good reputation – you were forced to make contact by elbowing the prominent and the influential, the beautiful and the boldy-attired.

If you do the math, you will discover that the 300 leading lights of Singapore society really number 240.

Several mover-shaker entries list quite a few members of their families, I counted 60 who, ahem, have relations.

Well, I had to do something, not just mingle there, trying to look pretty with foie gras and caviar between my teeth.

This article was first published in The New Paper on Feb 8, 2009.