Rishi Sunak is one of the wealthiest people in Britain and his appointment as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will be the first time in the history of the country that the residents of Downing Street will be richer than those of Buckingham Palace.

The joint fortune of Sunak, a former banker, and his wife, Akshata Murthy, daughter of Indian IT pioneer and founder of Infosys Narayan Murthy, stands at about 730 million pounds ($830 million), according to the Sunday Times Rich List. The couple ranked 222 on the UK's wealthiest 250 people list, published earlier this year. In comparison, the estimated fortune of late Queen Elizabeth II was 370 million pounds ($420 million), the year’s list, published before the monarch’s death, revealed. Sunak is believed to be the richest man in the House of Commons.

Murthy’s wealth

Most of the personal wealth of the couple comes from Murthy’s stake in Infosys. Akshata owns a 0.93 percent stake worth 690 million pounds in Infosys, Mint reported.

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Akshata holds stakes in other companies as well and is the owner of start-up incubator Catamaran Ventures UK.

Sunak earned £151,649 as the Chancellor and is expected to be getting even more as the British PM. Between 2001 and 2004, Sunak served as a partner at two highly-profitable hedge funds. Earlier, he worked as an analyst for the investment bank, Goldman Sachs. The new PM was a multi-millionaire in his mid-twenties, The Times report said.

Real estate

The couple owns four properties valued at more than £15 million. They have two homes in London, one in Yorkshire and one in Santa Monica, California, US.

Sunak and his family spend the week in their five-bedroom house in Kensington and weekends in a Georgian manor house at Richmond in North Yorkshire, The Guardian reported.

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Sunak had bought the house before being elected as MP in 2015 and has transformed it into something similar to a wellness retreat with a £400,000 indoor swimming pool, tennis court, yoga studio, gym and hot tub, the newspaper said.

While some of Sunak’s critics believe his vast fortune made him unfit as the premier of the country, his supporters say it is his background as chancellor and the experience in making money that qualifies him to be a leader of a nation going through economically tumultuous times.

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(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)

First Published:Oct 25, 2022 1:38 PM IST