Believe it or not, but current British monarch King Charles III is not the wealthiest individual living in the country. In fact, you may be surprised to learn that the combined net worth of his Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and wife Akshata Murty, far supersede English royalty by quite a considerable margin. And if a report released in mid-May of 2024 is to be believed, they have added yet another hundred million pounds to their fortune in a year’s time.
The information about their wealth comes from the Sunday Times Rich List 2024 — an annual wealth fortune tracker of the richest people in the UK.
Forty-four-year-old Sunak, who was born in Southampton, is the first British Asian Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He is Leader of the Conservative Party, also known as the Tories, and has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond (Yorks). He has a BA degree from Lincoln College, Oxford, and earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Stanford University.
Akshata Murty, also 44, is the daughter of N.R. Narayan Murthy — the Indian billionaire businessman who co-founded multinational tech giant Infosys. She was born in Hubli, in Karnataka, India. A highly educated woman, Murthy has a BA degree from Claremont McKenna College, earned a diploma from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles and completed her MBA from Stanford University.
Murthy met Sunak in 2004 at Stanford. They got married in 2009 and have two children. On 25 October 2022, Sunak assumed office as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It was a few months before that when the couple made it to the Sunday Times Rich List for the first time.
The couple has remained one of the wealthiest people in the country since, which has been a subject of criticism in the British media. Nevertheless, where do they stand now among the richest in Britain in 2024?
All about the wealth of Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murty
The combined net worth of Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy is GBP 651 million (RM 3.9 billion), according to Sunday Times Rich List 2024. This places them 245th on the list.
By comparison, the GBP 610 million (RM3.6 billion) net worth of King Charles III landed him in 258th place on the list.
The Sunday Times said that the combined net worth of Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy rose by GBP 122 million (RM732 million) from the GBP 529 million (RM3.1 billion) they had in 2023. This is the second time the couple has surpassed the British monarch. The first time they did it was when they debuted on the list in 2022. At the time, they were placed 222nd out of the 250 on the list with a combined net worth of GBP 730 million (RM4.3 billion). That figure meant that they were richer than the late Queen Elizabeth II, whose personal fortune was evaluated at GBP 370 million (RM2.2 billion).
However, British media reports do underline that the actual wealth of the monarch is in several billions of pounds since evaluation of their personal wealth is very difficult. This is unlike the Sunak family’s fortune, which can be easily computed because of the open nature of their earnings, investments and other sources of income.
The list, meanwhile, was topped by Gopi Hinduja and family, with a net worth of GBP 37.2 billion (RM223 billion) — making them one of the richest families in the world.
Net worth and earnings of Rishi Sunak
The big question is: How did Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy build their high net worth?
Tax records show Sunak earned GBP 2.2 million (RM13.2 million) in 2022-2023, on which he paid around 23 percent tax, or GBP 508,308 (RM3.049 million).
The document, published by Downing Street in February 2024, showed that the PM paid GBP 163,364 (RM980,228) in tax on a total income of GBP 432,884 (INR 4.58 crore). This was in addition to the GBP 359,240 tax (RM2.155 million) paid by him on around GBP 1.8 million (RM10.8 million) in capital gains from a “blind managed” US-based investment fund.
His investment income totalled GBP 289,422 (RM1.7 million) and the interest he earned on the savings in the bank amounted to GBP 3,985 (RM23,911).
The filing revealed that his ministerial salary is GBP 55,358 (RM332,162), which is in addition to his salary of GBP 84,119 (RM504,736) as an MP in the British parliament. His salary income made up 7 per cent of his total income for the year. In all, Sunak earned a total of GBP 7 million (RM42 million) in the last four years.
He is now set to earn more in salary as the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) recommended in March 2024 an increase of 5.5 per cent in the salaries of MPs, which would bring the figure to around GBP 91,000 (RM546,024).
It is clear that Sunak, though one of the richest MPs in Britain in his own right, has a very paltry contribution to the massive net worth he enjoys with Akshata Murthy.
Net worth and earnings of Akshata Murty
The personal net worth of Akshata Murthy makes up around 90 per cent of the combined fortune she has with Rishi Sunak. It is apparent that she is many times richer than her husband.
Her individual net worth can be estimated at around GBP 590 million (RM3.5 billion) for 2023 — the year in review by Sunday Times Rich List. According to the publication, the figure is GBP 108 million (RM648 million) more than the previous year.
According to Financial Express, Murthy has a stake of around 1.05 per cent in Infosys, an Indian tech multinational that was co-founded by her father, N.R. Narayan Murthy in 1981. The company is worth around USD 70 billion (RM420 billion approx.) and is one of India’s most successful businesses. It employs over 300,000 in about 50 countries. Its stupendous success has resulted in massive growth in the form of the shares of its stakeholders.
Akshata Murty’s mother, Sudha Murthy, has a stake of 0.93 per cent while her brother, Rohan, has a stake of 1.64 per cent. N.R. Narayan Murthy holds a stake of 0.36 per cent in the company.
Clearly, Murthy’s net worth is almost entirely because of her stake in Infosys. Besides that, she has been a trustee at Claremont McKenna College since 2011.
She was a director at the UK arm of Catamaran Ventures, a venture capital and equity firm funded by her father, from 2013 to 2023. The firm employs 4,000 people in India, France and the US and has holdings worth over USD 1 billion (INR 8,331 crores approx.). The firm closed its UK business in December 2023.
Murthy was also the director of heritage outfitter New & Lingwood and London-based fitness company Digme from 2017 to 2022. She left Digme as it went into administration in February. Reports from 2022 suggest that she reportedly owned a 4.4 per cent stake in the business.
Murthy has previously worked at Deloitte and Unilever. She worked for venture capital company Tendris for two years and left it in 2009 to start her fashion label, Akshata Designs. According to The Guardian, the brand collapsed three years later.
In February 2023, The Guardianreported that Murthy held 218,785 shares in a furniture firm named The New Craftsmen. She lost her stake after the firm filed for liquidation in November 2022. Her shares came via Catamaran Ventures UK.
Assets owned by Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy
Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy reportedly own four houses across the UK and the US. The total worth of their property portfolio comes to around GBP 15 million (RM90 million).
Their most famous address is the 19th-century, Georgian heritage mansion in North Yorkshire. The property, an 1826 Grade II-listed manor house in the village of Kirby Sigston near Northallerton, spans an area of around 48,500 square metres. It was bought in 2015 for a reported GBP 1.5 million (RM9 million).
The property was the subject of controversy in 2021 when Sunak got approval for the building of an approximately 12.1-metre swimming pool, gym and outdoor tennis court on its grounds.
In August 2023, the house became the target of Greenpeace activists who climbed on the rooftop of the building and draped it with oil-black fabric in protest of the government’s plans to grant over 100 new oil and gas extraction licences in the North Sea. Following this incident, Sunak requested approval for a 50-metre-long and 1.2-metre-high fence around the property, the expenses of which he would pay from his own pocket.
The couple has two properties in London. One of them is an apartment in South Kensington’s Old Brompton Road. It was bought by Sunak in 2001 when he was working for Goldman Sachs as an investment analyst. The PM keeps the residence for family members who need a place to stay in London when they visit the couple.
The other London property is a five-bedroom mews house in Kensington. It is the couple’s primary London address and was bought in 2010 for GBP 4.5 million (RM27 million). The worth of the property is estimated at over GBP 7 million (RM42 million), in the current market. The house has four bathrooms and two reception rooms spread across four storeys. There is a private garden on its grounds.
The couple’s residence outside the UK is a GBP 5.5 million (RM33 million) penthouse on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, California. The penthouse was bought by Murthy from its developer in 2014. The apartment overlooks the Pacific Ocean and offers incredible views of Santa Monica’s double-jointed pier.
(Hero and Featured images: Courtesy of Rishi Sunak/@rishisunakmp/Instagram)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
– Is Rishi Sunak a relative of Sudha Murthy?
Yes, Rishi Sunak is the son-in-law of Sudha Murthy.
– How is Rishi Sunak related to Narayan Murthy?
Rishi Sunak is the son-in-law of Narayan Murthy.
