Rishi Sunak : Youngest Prime Minister In The UK In 200 years

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Rishi Sunak is the New Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Leader of the Conservative Party. He assumed the office on 25 October 2022. He is one of the richest Prime Ministers Elected in the United Kingdom and has net worth of £730 Million. Moreover, he is the husband of Akshata Murthy (Daughter of Infosys Founder NR Narayana Murthy and Business Women Sudha Murthy) and is a Businessman by Profession. He is also the first Asian and Hindu to ever hold the office of the Prime Minister of Britain.He is born to African- Hindu Parents of Punjabi descent who migrated to Britain in the 1960s. He is a well educated man with an MBA from Stanford University.

Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murthy Net Worth is combined fortune of £730 Million and they are ranked as 222nd richest people in the whole of Britain. He has worked at hedge funds companies from 2004 to 2015. He also served as the director of the investment firm owned by his father in law, N.R. Narayana Murthy from 2013 to 2015. In 2015, he was elected to the House of Commons for Richmond. His wife is a fashion designer by profession and is also the director of Catamaran Ventures in the UK, which is owned by N.R. Murthy. His wife owns 0.93% stake in Infosys which is valued to be at $900 Million as of 2022 hence making her one of the richest women in Britain. Together they own various properties such as Kirby Sigston Manor, a mews house in Kensington and a penthouse in Santa Monica, California.

Rishi Sunak (42 years) is the first Asian to be elected as the Prime Minister of the UK. He started his political career in 2014 and has not looked back ever since. He was elected to the House of Commons in 2015 and he took oath on the Bhagavad Gita. He has then worked as the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Local Government under Prime Minister Theresa May. Under Boris Johnson, he assumed the office as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and then he was appointed as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. After the resignation of Liz Truss from the office of Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak was voted in with the majority of votes. He assumed office on 25 October 2022 and he was appointed by King Charles III. He is expected to fulfil all his duties and roles well.

Rishi Sunak is of African-Indian descent and follows the Hindu Religion. His family migrated to Britain in the 1960s and he was born in Southampton. He has lived in Britain his whole life and is now serving as the Prime Minister of Britain and the Leader of the Conservative Party.

Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murthy together are one of the richest people in the whole of Britain. They own a fortune of £730 Million which is 68,24,81,23,030 INR. Rishi Sunak has been working as a politician since 2014 when he joined the Conservative Party. His first win was being elected to the House of Commons in 2015. He has been ascending on the ladder of success ever since. He was elected as Parliamentary-Under Secretary of State for the Local Government in 2018 under the then Prime Minister Theresa May. He was appointed as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Boris Johnson. After this, he was appointed as the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2020. After the resignation of Boris Johnson, he also resigned from his position and contested in the elections for the Leader of the Conservative Party. He lost to Liz Truss but Liz Truss resigned in less than a month. Rishi Sunak was then elected as the Leader unanimously and assumed the office of the Prime Minister on 25 October 2022.

Rishi Sunak Family

Rishi Sunak was born to parents of African-Indian (Yashvir Sunak and Usha Sunak) descent on 12 May 1980 in Southampton. His family is of Punjabi descent and he has a brother, Sanjay and a sister, Raakhi. His brother is a psychologist and his sister is Chief of Strategy and Planning at Education Cannot Wait in the UN Global Fund for Education. He married the daughter of N.R. Narayana Murthy, who is the founder of Infosys which is an Indian multinational information technology company. Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy have 2 daughters. His wife is the director of her father’s firm Catamaran Ventures in the UK and also has stakes in Infosys. His wife is also a fashion designer by profession. Rishi Sunak went to an independent boys boarding school, Winchester College, where he was the head boy.

Sunak UK Prime Minister

Rishi Sunak succeeded Liz Truss as the Prime Minister of UK after she resigned from the post in less than a month. Liz Truss won the majority of the Conservative Party after the resignation of Boris Johnson. Rishi Sunak contested the elections then too but he lost. This time he was elected unanimously. The newly appointed Rishi Sunak UK Prime Minister on 25 October 2022 by King Charles III. He will be assuming the office today and will have to deal with lots of problems created by his predecessors. He is the first Asian, the first Hindu and the first person of Indian Origin to be the Prime Minister of Britain. He is known for his work during the COVID-19 pandemic when he introduced the Job Retention Scheme, Future Fund and Eat Out to Help Out scheme. He is also known for speaking out for LGBTQ+ community which has lead to his rise in popularity. 

Early Life

Rishi Sunak was born at Southampton General Hospital in  Southampton , Britain to Indian  parents. Sunak went to school at Winchester College . He later studied at Lincoln College, Oxford and went to Stanford University  as a Fulbright Scholar . After graduating, he worked for Goldman Sachs .

Political career

Sunak was elected for Richmond (Yorks) at the 2015 general election . He was in Theresa May's second government  as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government . He voted for May's Brexit withdrawal agreement three times. After May resigned, Sunak supported Boris Johnson 's campaign to become Conservative leader .

After Johnson was elected, he appointed Sunak as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Sunak replaced Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer after his resignation in February 2020.

As Chancellor, Sunak managed the government's economic response to the economic problems from the government's decision to lockdown to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom .

In April 2022, he broke COVID-19 regulations during lockdowns. He was the first Chancellor in British history to be sanctioned for breaking the law while in office. He resigned  as Chancellor on 5 July 2022 because he was against Johnson's leadership.

On 5 September 2022, it was announced that Truss had defeated Sunak in the Conservative leadership race by 81,326 votes to 60,399.

A month later after Truss resigned as prime minister in October, Sunak was the front-runner to replace her in the second leadership race  of 2022. He announced his candidacy on 23 October 2022. After former Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he would not run again and Penny Mordaunt  withdrawing from the race, Sunak became the only leadership candidate and on 24 October, was announced as Conservative Party leader.

Sunak became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom  on 25 October 2022. He is the first non-white person and the first Hindu  to become prime minister. With a net worth of £730 million, he is the richest British prime minister since Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby . He is also the youngest prime minister since William Pitt the Younger .

Personal life 

In 2009, he married fashion designer Akshata Murty. She is the daughter of the Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy  and businesswoman Sudha Murty. They have two children.  They live at a manor house  in the village of Kirby Sigston , near to Northallerton, North Yorkshire. They also own a mews  house in Kensington  in central London, a flat in South Kensington , London, and a penthouse apartment in Santa Monica, California .

UK’s 222 Wealthiest Man

 

This year, the Sunday Times Rich list valued the joint fortune of Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty at £730m and ranked them 222 on the UK's wealthiest 250 people list. Sunak is said to be the richest man in the House of Commons, while reports claim that his wife Akshata is wealthier than British Queen Elizabeth II with assets worth £430 million.  The Sunak and Murty own four homes, i.e. two in London, one in Yorkshire and one in LA.

 

The five-bedroom house in Kensington is said to be worth £7m alone. The four storeys house also has a private garden. There is another home in London's Old Brompton Road, apparently where the extended family stays when they visit. 

In Yorkshire, the couple own a Grade-II listed Georgian mansion, set across 12 acres and includes an ornamental lake. Meanwhile, the penthouse in California overlooks the beach where Baywatch was filmed.

 

Their finances came under scrutiny as Labour party called him to be more transparent regarding loans he took to fund his businesses. The Guardian reported, Rishi was forced to explain details about how he managed his family's fortune, which is said to total £730million. 

 

How Sunak earns his money? 

 

Rishi Sunak's salary when he was Chancellor was £151,649, and if he wins the leadership contest, he would be earning even more. Before entering politics, Sunak was a partner at two highly-profitable hedge funds and from 2001 to 2004 he was an analyst for the investment bank, Goldman Sachs. According to The Times(opens in new tab), Sunak was a multi-millionaire in his mid-twenties.

However, most part of his wealth is from his marriage to Akshata Murthy, who owns a 0.93% stake worth £690m in Infosys.

 

Earlier this year, he also ran into trouble when the Independent newspaper claimed that Akshata, who is still an Indian national, had non-domiciled status in the UK and non liable to pay taxes in UK. In fact, her domicile status of helps her to save her around £20 million in taxes on dividends from her shares in Infosys. This immediately tarnished his image while he was contesting for the same post earlier this year. 

 

Coke Addict

Sunak “collects Coca-Cola things”, as he told two school pupils, before saying “I am a Coke addict, I am a total Coke addict,” then, as the pupils sniggered , clarifying “Coca-Cola addict, just for the record”. He once tried to pay for a Coke at a petrol station , but was confused by the contactless credit card system.