Sunak and his wife Akshata Murthy are sitting on a fortune of 730,000,000 pounds. That's around twice the estimated wealth of King Charles III, according to Labour MP Nadia Whittome. King Charles III had a net worth around £388,491,400.
Britain's opposition party took a jibe at Sunak over his vast family wealth and past career in investment funds, suggesting he is out of touch amid a rampant cost-of-living crisis.
"Remember this whenever he talks about making 'tough decisions' that working class people will pay for," Whittome tweeted.
Source of Rishi Sunak's wealth
As per media reports, the major source of the couple's wealth is Murthy's 0.9% stake in her father Narayana Murthy’s IT firm Infosys. As per the shareholding pattern on the BSE, Murthy has 3,89,57,096 equity shares of 0.93% stake in Infosys as of end of September 2022 quarter. Murthy earned more than ₹125 crore in dividend income from Infosys in 2022 alone.
According to the Sunday Times, the source of their wealth comes from “technology and hedge fund," implying the remaining £40 million may originate from Sunak’s time as a partner at hedge funds Children’s Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners, or from his time as director of Catamaran Ventures, the investment firm also owned by his father-in-law, which he led from 2013 to 2015 before going into politics.
About Rishi Sunak
The son of immigrants from India and East Africa, Sunak had a privileged upbringing and went to private schools including the prestigious Winchester College.
After graduating from the University of Oxford, he worked at Goldman Sachs investment management company and two hedge funds, which manage the money of private investors.
His earnings from this period are not known and as a minister he has placed his investments in a non-transparent "blind trust".
In 2009, he married Murthy. While Sunak is a British national, his wife Akshata is an Indian citizen. Her non-domiciled status, which allows her to earn money abroad without paying taxes in Britain for a period of up to 15 years, has been a divisive issue in the UK.
Born in her mother Sudha Murthy's hometown of Hubballi in northern Karnataka, Akshata did her schooling in Bengaluru, before moving to Claremont McKenna College in California, where she graduated with a dual major in economics and French.
She did a fashion designing diploma from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, which followed a short work stint at Deloitte and Unilever. She thereafter went on to pursue her MBA at Stanford where she met Rishi Sunak.
The couple, who own a vast real estate portfolio, has two children, Krishna and Anoushka.
