Akshata Murty, wife of embattled British finance minister Rishi Sunak, is richer than the Queen, according to AFP news agency. Akshata is the daughter of a self-made tech billionaire, NR Narayana Murthy and a philanthropist mother Sudha Murty.
Akshata, 42, owns shares worth almost a billion dollars in Infosys, according to the company's disclosure to the stock exchanges. This makes Akshata Murty richer than Queen Elizabeth II, whose personal wealth is about £350 million ($460 million), according to the 2021 Sunday Times Rich List, the agency quoted.
Akshata and Rishi Sunak own at least four properties, including a £7 million five-bedroom house in upscale Kensington, London, and a flat in Santa Monica, California.
Akshata is also the director of venture capital company Catamaran Ventures which she founded with Sunak in 2013.
Off late, Sunak has seen his popularity sink because of surging consumer prices in Britain. Besides, reports like Murty's foreign earnings are shielded from British tax authorities have added pressure on Sunak.
However, Akshata Murty confirmed this week that she "is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes", meaning returns from her Infosys stake are only liable for taxation outside Britain.
Akshata created her own fashion label, Akshata Designs, in 2010.
According to a 2011 Vogue profile, she works with artists in remote villages to create Indian-meets-Western fusion clothes that are "vehicles to discovering Indian culture".
Akshata's father co-founded tech giant Infosys in 1981, the outsourcing behemoth that helped drive India's remarkable transformation into the "back office of the world".
Borrowing ₹10,000 from his wife Sudha to help create it, the firm is now worth around $100 billion and was the first Indian company to list on Wall Street.
Akshata's mother is regarded as "India's favourite granny", she is a prolific author and a powerful force in social work after setting up 60,000 libraries and building 16,000 toilets.
Akshata and Rishi met at Stanford University in the United States when the former was pursuing her MBA. The future chancellor of the exchequer was a Fulbright scholar already with a first-class Oxford degree.
Their 2009 wedding was a relatively modest affair, but the reception was attended by about 1,000 guests including politicians, industrialists, and cricketers.
(With AFP inputs)
