Rishi Sunak and spouse Akshata Murty’s £529m fortune – flash automobiles and 4 houses

Defeated Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has quit Number 10 Downing Street with his wife Akshata Murty and daughters after being destroyed in the General Election by Labour and Sir Kier Starmer.

The Tory leader, who has announced he will stand down from his position, apologised to the country and his outgoing MPs and staff in an emotional speech outside his home before walking away with his wife and heading to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to King Charles. However, the former PM has his huge wealth to fall back on now he is quitting his job as an MP.

Sunak boasts multiple luxurious homes, has several cars, and sends his children to private school. His immense wealth was brought to the forefront when his billionaire heiress wife Akshata Murty promised to pay UK tax following a huge backlash. Two years ago today on April 8, 2022, Murty bowed to pressure after claiming non-domicile status – which meant she didn’t have to pay UK tax on her overseas income – and said she would pay given her husband’s status in a voluntary move.

The BBC estimated she would have avoided £2.1m a year in UK tax. It came just months before Rishi automatically became PM in October 2022 after Penny Mordaunt crashed out of the Tory leadership race, failing to secure more than 100 votes from fellow MPs. While he’s the first person of colour to be in the hot seat, Rishi, a former hedge fund manager, is also said to be the richest.

The couple sits on a humongous combined fortune of £529m, according to the Sunday Times rich list, a fall from £730m in 2022. His wealth has been criticised over the years, with Labour MP Nadia Whittome, taking to X, formerly Twitter, saying: “Remember this whenever he talks about making ‘tough decisions’ that working-class people will pay for.” Mr Sunak boasts a buoyant property portfolio and has made some lavish purchases, from Prada shoes to a £5million California penthouse. Here, The Mirror takes a look at just how wealthy the Prime Minister is…

Multiple homes

Rishi’s wife Akshata Murthy, who is a fashion designer, is the daughter of billionaire tech tycoon N.R. Narayana Murthy. He is the co-founder of the IT firm Infosys and is listed as the sixth richest man in India. The couple, who married in 2009 in a two-day wedding in Bangalore, share two daughters Krishna and Anoushka. They own a portfolio of four impressive properties, with two in London, one in Yorkshire, with another in California, and are valued at more than £15m.

The family spends the majority of their time at their five-bedroom mews home in Kensington, west London, which is estimated by estate agents to be worth more than £7m. At weekends and during the holidays, the family of four will escape to the north Yorkshire countryside to reside in their Grade II-listed Georgian manor constituency home in the village of Kirby Sigston.

The property, which they purchased before Rishi was elected as an MP in 2015, has been transformed into a space of wellness and relaxation, coming with its own swimming pool, gym, yoga studio, and tennis court, across a 12-acre plot of land. It’s now worth more than £2m. Alongside these two houses, they also own a flat in west London on Old Brompton road, which is used by visiting family. And over in Santa Monica, the Sunaks have their own idyllic penthouse, which is valued at £5.5million.

It reportedly has “stunning views of the Santa Monica mountains” and is a place where you can “wake up to the sound of waves crashing against the shore”, and even has a “pet spa”. Rishi and Akshata met there whilst they were students, and last summer holidayed there as a family.

He said the California trip was “really special” as they had been a few years without a “proper” summer holiday. “We’re going to California, which is where I met my wife, so it’s very special to us, but the kids are very excited because I’m taking them to Disneyland,” he added in a chat with LBC radio. The area is a celebrity haunt, with actors Ben Affleck and Reese Witherspoon often seen spending time there.

Flash cars

When Mr Sunak defended his immense wealth, he claimed he and his family used an “ageing” Volkswagen Golf to get about in London. However, this was later found to be by far the cheapest of the Tory’s selection of four cars – which are kept at his different properties. Sunak had faced ridicule after he posed for photos filling up a Sainsbury’s employee’s Kia Rio car at the petrol pump to promote his 5p-a-litre cut in fuel duties. When asked about his own vehicle by Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, Sunak remarked that his Volkswagen was older than hers – but did not reference his three other vehicles. He also owns a “high-specification Range Rover”, which costs from £94,000 new, and a top-of-the-range Lexus and a BMW in California.

Private school fees

Rishi and Akshata send their daughters to a private all-girls primary school, where Victoria and David Beckham’s daughter Harper was also a pupil. Located in the affluent area of South Kensington, Glendower Prep, for girls aged 4 to 11, costs £7,985 a term, or £23,955 for the year. With two daughters, it means they have spent almost £50,000 on their education a year. However his eldest is now believed to be at boarding school.

In November 2022, Rishi revealed that he was afraid to let his daughter go out alone as she had reached the age where she wanted to walk to school by herself. Speaking at the time, he said: ”I come to it as a parent. My eldest is at the age where she’s starting to walk to places by herself or is wanting to. ‘That’s why we were not in that flat in that last term when I was Chancellor.

”It was because she was going to start walking to her primary school. She turned 11 and then she was allowed to walk to school by herself — which she didn’t end up doing for lots of other reasons. But it brings it home to you as a parent. I want to make sure my kids and everyone else can walk around safely. That’s what any parent wants for their children.”

Prada loafers and smart coffee mug

The flaunting of his wealth was critiqued in his first leadership bid against Truss, who pointed out she was wearing £4.50 Claire’s Accessories earrings while her fellow contestant sported £450 Prada loafers. Rishi is also the proud owner of a £180 smart coffee mug, which saw many social media users claim that if he thinks nothing of spending hundreds on a flashy flask, he can’t have any idea what it is truly like for struggling families amid the cost of living crisis.

The vessel, rumoured to be a Christmas gift from his wife, is a Bluetooth-enabled device from Ember costing nearly £200, complete with a charging coaster and heating technology that maintains the temperature of your beverage. In response to the comments on being out of touch, Rishi, who made his money at investment bank Goldman Sachs and hedge funds TCI and Theleme Partners, said he wouldn’t shy away from questions on his money during a podcast with The Telegraph. I actually quite welcome it, to be honest,” he said. “It is the opposite of annoying. Very few people bring it up with me.While I was chancellor I did town hall [meetings] very regularly with members of the public… virtually nobody asked me about it.”

He even argued that he doesn’t think voters care that he wore a bespoke £3,500 Henry Herbert suit or Prada shoes while touring a building site during the campaign, adding: “Values are what are important, what I’m wearing is irrelevant to all of that.” In 2022, Mr Sunak was forced to defend his wife’s tax affairs after she opted to claim non-domicile status, meaning she did not have to pay UK tax on her overseas income. The BBC estimated she would have avoided £2.1m a year in UK tax.

Following an outcry, Ms Murthy announced that she would start paying British taxes on all her worldwide income – a move she said was solely voluntary. Ms Murthy, an Indian citizen, who owns a 0.9 per cent stake worth around £500m in Infosys, the software giant founded by her father, said at the time that she was “so proud” to live in the UK but defended her “entirely legal” decision to claim non-dom status.

But at the time she added: “It has become clear that many do not feel it is compatible with my husband’s role as Chancellor. I understand and appreciate the British sense of fairness and I do not wish my tax status to be a distraction for my husband or to affect my family.” In an interview with the Sun newspaper, Mr Sunak said he believed he was the victim of a campaign to discredit him, saying: “To smear my wife to get at me is awful.”