Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murty are now richer than King Charles
Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty are now richer than the King after their personal fortune jumped by more than £120m last year.
According to the Sunday Times rich list, the couple’s towering wealth has increased from £529m last year to £651m, at a time when millions of Britons are struggling with the cost of living.
The Prime Minister and Murty come 245th on the list (up from 275th) of Britain’s mega-rich and are the wealthiest pair to live in No10 Downing Street.
It makes them richer than the Monarch, King Charles, whose own wealth climbed from £600m to £610m this year.
The news comes as the cost of living crisis continues to bite, with figures from the Trussell Trust recently revealing a record 3.1 million food parcels were handed over the last year.
The couple’s increase in wealth is driven mainly by Murty’s stake in the he $70bn (£55.3bn) Indian IT company Infosys founded by her father. Her shares grew in value by £108.8m to nearly £590m for the year.
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The couple’s ballooning wealth comes as Westminster gears up for a general election and as the Conservatives languish in the polls. Surveys consistently show that people describe Sunak as being ‘rich’.
Murty attracted sharp criticism when Sunak was chancellor, after it emerged she was benefiting from Britain’s non-dom tax status.
The rules meant she was able to claim her permanent home was outside the UK and only had to pay tax on earnings here. It was thought she was able to avoid £20.6m tax as a result.
The Sunday Times Rich List top ten
1. Gopi Hinduja – £37.2bn
2. Sir Leonard Blavtanik – £29.2bn
3. David and Simon Reuben and family – £24.9bn
4. Sir Jim Ratcliffe – £23.5bn
5. Sir James Dyson and family – £20.8bn
6. Barnaby and Merlin Swire and family – £17.2bn
7. Idan Ofer – £14.9bn
8. Lakshmi Mittal and family – £14.9bn
9. Guy, George, Alannah and Galen Weston and family – £14.4bn
10. John Fredriksen and family – £12.8bn
She later apologised and agreed to pay UK tax on her overseas income from 2021.
Murty is by far is the wealthiest in the Sunak household, but the PM himself – who is leading the country during a cost of living crisis – is a former hedge fund manager.
He previously worked as an analyst for investment bank, Goldman Sachs, from 2001 to 2004, before becoming a partner at two hedge funds.
Sunak’s MP (£91,346) salary and PM salary (£80,807) account for just 6.5% of his personal income, with his investment portfolio making up the rest.
He made £2.2m in 2022/23, more than 60 times the average British salary, according to the Rich List. It’s not known how much he made per year before entering parliament in 2015.
Neither the King nor the Sunak couple came close to the paper’s top ten, however, which was dominated by multi-billionaires.
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