The richest tenant of 10 Downing Street. The new British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, breaks some records. At 42, he becomes the UK’s youngest prime minister in 200 years, beating the previous record holder by a year. david cameron who took office at age 43 in 2010. He also becomes the first non-white person to hold the position.
But in the land of liberalism, it is the bank account of Boris Johnson’s former finance minister that arouses curiosity. Because this grandson of immigrants of Indian origin, the son of a public health doctor father and a pharmacist mother, is at the helm of a colossal fortune. dear to £730 million (more than 840 million euros) by the British press, the wealth of the new Prime Minister is double that of that of the current royal couple.
He would even become the richest prime minister in the kingdom’s history. According to the Guinness Book, the richest person to become British Prime Minister was one Edward Stanley, the 14th Earl of Derby (1799-1869), who had a personal fortune of over £7 million at the time, or the equivalent of 444 million current pounds. With a fortune of 730 million pounds, Sunak is 65% richer than his distant predecessor.
A 100 Billion Dollar Giant
How did Rishi Sunak make his fortune? Former Goldman Sachs banker and partner in hedge funds TCI and Theleme Partners, this pure product of British meritocracy (he studied at Oxford and in the United States at Stanford) had a very lucrative first life before politics. Although he earned millions of pounds during his banking career, most of his current wealth stems from his marriage to wealthy Indian heiress Akshata Murty.
At 42, Akshata Murty owns nearly $1 billion worth of shares in Infosys, an Indian tech giant co-founded by her father NR Narayana Murthy in 1981 and worth an estimated $100 billion today.
This represents a fortune greater than that of the late Queen Elizabeth II, which amounted to about 350 million pounds (420 million euros), according to the British newspaper The Sunday Times. Akshata Murty and Rishi Sunak met in the early 2000s at the prestigious Stanford University in California, where they were both pursuing a master’s degree in business. He, of modest origin, receives a scholarship.
In the hierarchical Indian society, Akshata Murty’s parents will accept that she marry the son of this simple doctor, originally from Southampton, in the south of England. Her father, Narayana Murthy, will give his approval to his daughter’s wedding plan, in which he acknowledges that Rishi Sunak corresponds in every way to the description of him: “brilliant, handsome and above all honest says the British press.
Set in England, the couple lives on a big train. They own four properties, three in England and a California penthouse on Santa Monica beach estimated at £5.5m.
During the week, the family (the Sunaks have two daughters) spend most of their time in an opulent five-bedroom house in west London. A house in the district of Kensington estimated at 7 million pounds. At weekends, the family retreats to a North Yorkshire mansion bought for £1.5m in 2015 and is said to be worth much more today.
A pool at 400,000 pounds
The couple had an indoor pool built there this summer to the tune of £400,000, as well as a gym, tennis court and hot tub. Events that have caused a lot of ink to flow through the Canal in the current context of rising energy prices.
According to The Guardian, the annual cost to heat the 12-by-5-meter pool would be £14,000 at current electricity prices, nearly six times the average family’s energy bill.
Especially since at the same time, the British discovered that Rishi Sunak’s wife had for years been considered by British tax authorities to be “not domiciled” in the UK, which would have saved the couple £20 million. taxes. A loophole that fueled criticism and tarnished the reputation of the former Minister of Finance.
Will the fortune of the new prime minister be a handicap for Richi Sunak? Many English people interviewed by The Guardian on this question do not seem to care. Fortune and lifestyle are, however, recurring subjects of controversy or ridicule by the English press. Like this summer during a visit to the site, where she compared Sunak’s outfit (bespoke suit at £3500 and Prada shoes at £500) to Liz Truss who wore Claire’s earrings that day at £4.50. A simplicity that is considered more consistent in the current context of purchasing power crisis.
Source: BFM TV
