The personal fortune of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty has fallen by more than £200 million over the last year as the value of her stake in her father’s company plummeted.
The couple’s wealth is estimated at around £529 million in the latest Sunday Times Rich List, a fall from £730 million a year earlier.
Ms Murty owns a small stake in Infosys, a 64 billion dollar (£52 billion) Indian IT giant co-founded by her billionaire father.
Her stake is just under 1% of the business, but the company shares have lost around a fifth of their value in the last year as investors worried about the future of the Indian technology sector.
The power couple first entered the Sunday Times Rich List last year when Mr Sunak was still chancellor in Boris Johnson’s government.
When running to be Prime Minister his standing was dented by scrutiny of his family’s financial affairs and large wealth.
The 2023 Rich List, released on Friday, also catapulted chemicals billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe into second place.
Sir Jim, who has recently bid to buy Manchester United, saw more than £23.6 billion added to his wealth, taking it to a total of £29.7 billion.
It makes him the second-richest person on the list, but the increase was largely due to “new information about his finances” rather than a change in his financial position, the list’s compilers said.
There were 171 billionaires in the UK this year, which six fewer than last year, but their combined wealth has risen by £30.7 billion to £683.9 billion.
The number one spot was again occupied by Gopi Hinduja and his family, days after his brother SP Hinduja died.
The list also showed that the Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson lost £1.8 billion last year, pushing him and his family down to 44th place with £4.2 billion.
Robert Watts, the list’s compiler, said: “This year’s Sunday Times Rich List shows a golden period for the super rich is over. For the first time in 14 years we’ve seen the number of UK billionaires fall.
“Two years ago we raised concerns about an unsettling boom in the fortunes of the very wealthy that continued unchecked during the political instability around Brexit and the pandemic.
“This is not a crash, but there are household names who have lost vast sums over the past year.
“The bursting of the tech bubble, the end of rock bottom interests and the jitters creeping through the banking industry have all taken their toll.
“The super rich don’t exist in a vacuum. Many small investors lost money in some of their overblown stock market floats.
“Many people also work for their businesses. Financial losses for billionaires can have implications for us all.”
Sir Richard Branson has seen his fortune shrink by more than 40% in a year after revealing his Virgin empire suffered big losses during the pandemic.
The British entrepreneur slipped down the annual Sunday Times Rich List following his satellite launch company, Virgin Orbit, going bankrupt.
Sir Richard’s wealth has dropped by £1.79 billion since last year, the list revealed.
It marks a bigger decline in his net worth than the tycoon indicated during an interview with the BBC earlier this month.
He told the BBC’s Amol Rajan that the pandemic “cost us a big percentage of our net worth, maybe £1.5 billion.
“There was a time where it really looked like we were going to lose everything”, he said.
The Sunday Times said last year that Sir Richard and his family were worth about £4.2 billion, placing him 44th on the list.
The businessman, who resides on a private island in the Caribbean, featured 77th on the list this year with a net worth of £2.41 billion.
Virgin Group, which includes airline Virgin Atlantic, gym group Virgin Active and bank Virgin Money, suffered a hit when Covid struck in early 2020.
Sir Richard faced criticism when he asked for a commercial loan from the Government at the height of the virus in a bid to keep his airline afloat.
He insisted he did not have billions in “cash in a bank account ready to withdraw” to save the business and tens of thousands of staff.
Virgin Atlantic eventually secured a £1.2 billion bailout involving only private funds, including £200 million from the wider Virgin Group.
The troubles continued for his empire with Virgin Orbit filing for bankruptcy earlier this month and axing 675 jobs – about 85% of its workforce.
It came after a rocket failed to complete the first satellite launch from UK soil in January.
Rich List 2023: Who are the wealthiest people in the UK?
The billionaire Hinduja family have topped the Sunday Times Rich List for the second year in a row as their fortune jumped by more than £6 billion.
Gopi Hinduja and his family, which is behind the Indian conglomerate Hinduja Group, were named as Britain’s richest just days after Mr Hinduja’s brother Sri died.
For the first time in 14 years the number of billionaires on the list fell, by six to 171.
But those who stayed in the billionaires’ club still saw their wealth grow, by close to £31 billion.
These are the 20 richest people and families in the UK, according to the Rich List:
1. Gopi Hinduja and family – £35 billion
2. Sir Jim Ratcliffe – £29.7 billion
3. Sir Leonard Blavatnik – £28.6 billion
4. David and Simon Reuben and family – £24.4 billion
5. Sir James Dyson and family – £23 billion
6. Lakshmi Mittal and family – £16 billion
7. Guy, George, Alannah and Galen Weston and family – £14.5 billion
8. Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken and Michel de Carvalho – £13.1 billion
9. Kirsten and Jorn Rausing – £12 billion
10. Michael Platt – £11.5 billion
11. The Duke of Westminster and the Grosvenor family – £9.9 billion
12. Marit, Lisbet, Sigrid and Hans Rausing – £9.3 billion
13. Andy Currie – £9.2 billion
14. John Reece – £9.1 billion
15. Alex Gerko – £9.1 billion
16. Denise, John and Peter Coates and family – £8.8 billion
17. Anders Holch Povlsen £8.5 billion
18. Barnaby and Merlin Swire and family – £8.4 billion
19. John Fredriksen and family – £8.3 billion
20. Mikhail Fridman – £8.2 billion
