Inside The Fortune Of Britain’s New Prime Minister Rishi Sunak And His Wife, Akshata Murthy

After winning the contest for leadership of the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak is set to become the United Kingdom’s next prime minister. That will make him the most powerful person in the country. The 42-year-old former finance minister and investment banker is already among the U.K.’s richest, largely thanks to the fortune held by his wife, Akshata Murthy.

Murthy, 42, is the daughter of N.R. Narayana Murthy, the cofounder and retired chairman of Indian tech giant Infosys, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $4.5 billion. Her own 0.93% stake in the publicly traded digital services consulting firm is worth $715 million, making up the vast majority of her and Sunak’s combined fortune. Altogether, Forbes estimates Sunak and his wife Murthy are worth roughly $810 million—more than a quarter of a billion dollars richer than the $500 million personal fortune of King Charles III. Sunak and Murthy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

As the new prime minister, Sunak will now move to 10 Downing Street, next door to his former residence when he served as Boris Johnson’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from February 2020 to July this year. He’ll also have access to Chequers, the sitting prime minister’s 16th-century countryside retreat in Buckinghamshire.

But much like the British monarch, Sunak and Murthy—who married in August 2009 in a two-day ceremony in Bangalore, India and have two daughters—have their own personal real estate portfolio. The couple owns four homes spread across the U.K. and California, worth an estimated $18.3 million.

The largest property in their collection is Manor House, a 19th-century, heritage-listed two-story countryside mansion in the village of Kirby Sigston in north Yorkshire, which they purchased in July 2015 for $2.3 million. The couple is reportedly spending $450,000 to install a leisure center with a 40-foot swimming pool, a gym and an outdoor tennis court. In London, their main residence is at 16 Hesper Mews in upscale Kensington, a four-bedroom terraced house which they acquired for $7.1 million in 2010. Sunak also owns an apartment on Old Brompton Road in nearby south Kensington, which he bought for about $300,000 in September 2001. In California—where Sunak and Murthy met as students at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business—they reportedly own an oceanfront penthouse at 1705 Ocean Ave. in Santa Monica, valued at $7.5 million.

Outside of real estate, it’s Murthy who owns the most assets. Besides her stake in Infosys, she owns Catamaran Ventures UK, the British branch of her father’s venture capital and private equity firm. In its latest annual report, the firm declared $4 million in net assets plus a $4.8 million interest-free loan from Murthy herself. Sunak previously owned 50% of the company but transferred his shares to Murthy in April 2015, shortly before entering parliament.

According to Pitchbook, Catamaran Ventures UK has stakes in luxury furniture marketplace The New Craftsmen (co-owned by Prudence MacLeod, Rupert Murdoch’s eldest child) and online florist Bloom & Wild. Former investments include wireless fetal monitoring device maker Monica Healthcare and veterinary MRI scanner manufacturer Hallmarq. Murthy’s firm was also reportedly an early investor in dara5, a private investment company established by a member of Qatar's ruling family. Catamaran Ventures’ main fund in India, helmed by her father, lists SpaceX, Reddit and gaming company Loco among its more than $1 billion in investments.

Some of Murthy’s business ventures haven’t been as successful. She had a fashion label based in California, Akshata Designs, which she set up in 2010 and shut down two years later. Murthy is also a director at and owns a small stake in boutique gym chain Digme Fitness, which was hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and was forced to shut two of its six locations earlier this year. She's also been a director at Soroco, a software firm founded by her brother Rohan; at childcare agency Koru Kids; and at New & Lingwood, a "gentlemen's outfitters" that makes high-end menswear including a "psychedelic silk smoking hat” that sells for $195.

Murthy drew scrutiny for her tax status earlier this year, when Sunak served as Chancellor of the Exchequer—Britain's finance minister and the No. 2 position in government. As an Indian citizen, Murthy is a tax resident of her home country and she confirmed in April that she had “non-domicile” status in the U.K.—allowing her to avoid dividend and capital gains taxes in Britain. Through a spokeswoman, Murthy told the BBC that she paid about $34,000 a year to maintain that status, a fee charged if a person has lived in the U.K. for at least seven of the previous nine years.

Forbes estimates that Murthy earned $70 million (pre-tax) in Infosys dividends from 2015 to 2022, plus $17 million from share sales in December 2017. India taxes dividends and long-term capital gains at 10%, compared to the U.K.’s 20% on capital gains and a whopping 39.35% on dividends for the highest earners. That means Murthy may have saved some $22 million in taxes by taking advantage of India’s lower rates. After a public outcry, her spokesperson announced in April that Murty would start paying U.K. taxes on her global income, including dividends and capital gains, "immediately" and for the previous tax year