Rishi Sunak is thought to be the wealthiest Prime Minister the country has ever had. (Picture: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Now Rishi Sunak has become Prime Minister, much of the electorate is looking to get to know him better – but one thing that’s widely known is that he’s not short of a few quid.
In fact, Mr Sunak is widely believed most loaded Prime Minister to have ever held the office.
A recent Savanta ComRes word cloud of responses to the question of ‘how you would describe Rishi Sunak in one word’ overwhelmingly returned the answer ‘Rich’ (as well as several much more unfortunate terms).
It should come as a surprise to none since his children attend school with David and Victoria Beckhams’ kids.
But just how wealthy is out new PM? Here is everything you need to know.
How much is Rishi Sunak worth?
Reports vary, but according to the Sunday Times’ Rich List for 2022, the net worth of Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, is estimated to be in the region of £730 million.
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This makes him richer than King Charles III, who is worth an estimated £600 million.
His net worth also dwarfs former PM Boris Johnson’s £1.7 million, estimated by Celebrity Net Worth.
Rishi and Akshata are thought to be worth £730 million (Picture: TRISTAN FEWINGS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Growing up the son of an NHS GP and a local pharmacist, Mr Sunak did not come from the sort of wealth his family now has. However, he still enjoyed a privileged upbringing that included attending the prestigious Hampshire public school Winchester College.
At 21, his parents loaned him £105,000, helping him buy a £210,000 London flat, Channel 4 reported.
Going on to work for both a hedge fund and the investment bank Goldman Sachs, Mr Sunak is likely to have had a substantial salary, though exact numbers are unclear.
The bulk of his family’s current wealth is reported to come from Ms Murty’s 0.93% share of her father’s company Infosys (allegedly worth around £690 million at the Sunday Times’ last valuation), a firm that boasts a $17.53 billion (£15.8 billion) total revenue on its website.
She also owns start-up incubator Catamaran Ventures UK and has shares a handful of other companies.
His wife’s ‘non dom’ tax status proved controversial when it was revealed in April of this year, though she would go on to give it up.
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The couple is also reported to own several properties, including a five-bedroom Kensington mews house, a Californian penthouse in Santa Monica, and a Georgian grade II listed manor house.
According to the Guardian, North Yorkshire manor house where the Sunaks spend their weekends has been ‘transformed into something of a wellness retreat with an indoor swimming pool, gym, yoga studio, hot tub and tennis court.’
His parliamentary register of interests also lists a flat in London with a value over £100,000 and/or giving rental income of over £10,000 a year.
As such, it’s probably fair to say that his annual salary as Prime Minister of £164,080 is unlikely to touch the sides.
How is ‘wealth’ defined?
While the Cambridge Dictionary defines wealth as ‘ a large amount of money or valuable possessions that someone has,’ measuring someone’s wealth is often complex in practice.
Usually, the wealthier an individual is, the harder it becomes to get an accurate picture of how much money they have.
When someone is reported to have a ‘net worth of X millions’ – it is essential to point out that it is rarely the case that they have this much sitting in the bank.
For example, high net-worth individuals often hold much of their money in stocks and shares that can vary in value, as was seen when the Billionaire creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, lost an estimated $6 billion (£4.4 billion) in one day after a Facebook outage that also affected Instagram and WhatsApp.
As such, it’s worth considering this with any net worth estimates of particularly wealthy individuals.
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A recent word cloud overwhelmingly described him as ‘rich’.
