Rishi Sunak (born May 12, 1980, Southampton, England) British politician and financier who became leader of the Conservative Party and prime minster of the United Kingdom in October 2022. Previously he served as chancellor of the Exchequer (2020–22).
Rishi Sunak Info
| Born | 12 May 1980 (age 43 years), Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, United Kingdom |
| Party | Conservative Party |
| Spouse | Akshata Murty |
| Parents | Yashvir Sunak, Usha Sunak |
| Previous offices | Chancellor of the Exchequer (2020–2022), MORE |
| Height | 1.7 m |
| Education: | Stanford Graduate School of Business (2006), Lincoln College (1998–2001), Winchester College |
| Education | Winchester College |
| Age | 43 Years |
| Children | Two, Krishna and Anoushka |
| Net Worth | £3.1 billion |
| Hobbies | Keeping ft, cricket football, movies |
| Lives in | Kirby Sigston, just outside Northallerton |
Rishi Sunak Early Life:
Rishi Sunak was raised in a family with a history of immigration. His father was born in Kenya, and his mother in Tanzania. His grandparents immigrated from Punjab, in northwest India, to East Africa. After their families moved to Southampton, England in the 1960s, they got together and got married. Sunak’s father joined the National Health Service as a general practitioner. Rishi Sunak, the oldest of their three children, would eventually handle the books for the little pharmacy his mother, a pharmacist, owned and ran. Later in his political career, Sunak would compare the principles he learned from working in the family business to those of Margaret Thatcher, the famous Conservative Party leader who was raised by a grocery store owner.
Rishi Sunak was able to attend Winchester College, an elite private institution that has produced six chancellors of the Exchequer, thanks to his parents’ savings and selfless efforts. Apart from his role as the “head boy” at Winchester, Sunak also edited the school newspaper. He worked as a table waiter at an Indian restaurant in Southampton during the summer. Sunak continued on to study economics, politics, and philosophy at Oxford’s Lincoln College—a degree that many aspiring prime ministers would later earn. The Oxford Trading & Investment Society, which gave students the chance to study about financial markets and international trading, was presided over by him there. Sunak worked as an intern at the Conservative Party headquarters while he was an Oxford student.
Rishi Sunak joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in 2001, following his graduation from Oxford, and remained employed by the investment banking firm until 2004. He then studied an MBA at Stanford University as a Fulbright scholar, where he met Akshata Murthy, the future wife of Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy, who is also a cofounder of Infosys, a leading technology company. After moving back to the UK in 2006, Sunak got a job with Sir Chris Hohn’s hedge fund, The Children’s Investment Fund Management (TCI), where he was promoted to partner status about two years later. Sunak joined Theleme Partners, another hedge fund, after leaving TCI in 2009. He wed Murthy that year, and the two of them would have two children. Due to Sunak’s commercial success and his wife’s 0.91 percent ownership in With Infosys, the pair started to accumulate a sizeable wealth, which The Sunday Times valued at approximately £730 million ($877 million) in 2022. (According to some sources, Akshata Murthy’s net worth might reach £1 billion, or $1.2 billion.)
Rishi Sunak Political career
Rishi Sunak started working for the Conservative Party in 2010. He also started working with Policy Exchange, a well-known conservative think tank, during this time. In 2014, he was appointed head of the BME Research Unit. In that same year, Sunak and Saratha Rajeswaran, the deputy head of the BME section, created the pamphlet A Portrait of Modern Britain, which was published by Policy Exchange. Sunak was selected in 2014 as the Conservative Party’s nominee to represent Richmond, North Yorkshire, in the House of Commons. Richmond is a safe Conservative constituency in the northern area of England that has been held by William Hague, the party’s leader from 1997 to 2001. A resounding majority chose Sunak in May 2015. He was a staunch supporter of “leave” before he took government and was skeptical about the Brexit issue, arguing that it will make the UK “freer, fairer, and more prosperous.” In 2017 and 2019, he was re-elected to the legislature and cast three votes in support of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit proposals.
He worked as parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy from 2015 to 2017 in addition to serving as a member of the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs Select Committee. He was appointed to the position of undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government in January 2018, marking his first ministerial appointment. Sunak became an outspoken advocate for Boris Johnson’s bid to lead the party. When Johnson emerged as the winner and prime minister, he gave Sunak a promotion, making him chief secretary to the Treasury in July 2019.
Tensions between Johnson and his boss, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid, were growing throughout Sunak’s time serving as second-in-command at the Treasury ministry. Following Javid’s resignation in February 2020, Johnson appointed Sunak, who at 39 years old, became the fourth youngest person to occupy that role in history. Sunak was quickly confronted with the numerous difficulties resulting from the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic’s arrival in Britain. Using his office’s authority, Sunak attempted to counterbalance the economic and human damage caused by the government-imposed shutdowns meant to stop the spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which is the source of COVID-19. He launched a massive economic assistance package, allocating about £330 billion ($400 million).
Rishi Sunak Net Worth
According to many reports, Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy have a combined net worth of nearly USD 810 million (about Rs 6,661 crores). Rishi Sunak and wife Akshata Murty are estimated to be worth around £529 million.
Local government under-secretary (2018–2019)
In the 2018 cabinet reshuffle, Sunak was named Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local ministry, a junior ministerial post in May’s second ministry.[37] On all three occasions, Sunak voted in favor of May’s Brexit separation agreement and against holding a second referendum on any withdrawal agreement. After Parliament rejected May’s withdrawal agreement three times, May announced her resignation in May 2019.
In the June campaign for the Conservative Party leadership contest in 2019, Sunak backed Boris Johnson and co-wrote an article with fellow MPs Robert Jenrick and Oliver Dowden to promote Johnson.
Chief secretary to the Treasury (2019–2020)
Rishi Sunak was named Chief Secretary to the Treasury, reporting to Chancellor Sajid Javid, after Johnson was named Conservative leader and prime minister. The next day he was elected to the Privy Council.49] In the seven-way election debates on the BBC and ITV in 2019, Sunak stood in for the Conservatives.
Chancellor of the Exchequer (2020–2022)
On 13 February, Sunak was promoted to chancellor as part of the 2020 cabinet reshuffle, after Javid had resigned that day following a meeting with Johnson.
COVID-19 pandemic
In the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic and its effects on the economy on March 17, 2020, Sunak rose to prominence in the government’s reaction. He instituted a furlough program for workers and a policy offering emergency support to enterprises worth £330 billion. This was the first staff retention program developed by a British government. The program was launched on March 20, 2020, and it offers companies financial assistance to cover 80% of employee wages and employment expenses on a monthly basis, up to a maximum of £2,500 per employee. The monthly operating costs were projected to be £14 billion.
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme was implemented on March 1st and ran for three months at first. After the nationwide lockdown was prolonged for three weeks, Sunak extended the program to the end of June 2020. Sunak extended the plan to the end of October 2020 at the end of May. In order to prevent or postpone widespread layoffs, business failures, and possibly record-high unemployment rates, the job retention program was extended. A plan for an additional £30 billion in expenditure was revealed by Sunak in July 2020. It included the Eat Out to Help Out program, a reduction in value-added tax (VAT) for the hotel industry, a stamp duty holiday, and an employer job retention bonus. intended to assist and generating employment in the hotel sector. Up to £10 per person, 50% of the cost of food and soft drinks in participating cafes, pubs, and restaurants was subsidized by the government. The promotion was valid every week from Monday through Wednesday, August 3 through August 31. The programme subsidized £849 million worth of meals in total. While some disagreed, others thought the program was successful in growing the hospitality sector. According to a 2020 study, Johnson agreed that the plan played a role in the increase in COVID-19 infections, but the Treasury dismissed this finding. During the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, the government’s main medical adviser Sir Patrick Vallance later claimed that Sunak had not told medical advisers about the project until it was disclosed, despite documented testimony from Sunak to the contrary.
On September 24, 2020, Sunak delivered the Winter Economy Plan. The statement’s goal was to outline actions intended to support economic recovery even further in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects. The proposal sought to maintain jobs and firms deemed viable while advancing economic recovery. The program was extended until December 2, 2020, following a second lockdown in England on October 31, 2020. On November 5, 2021, an extension until March 31, 2021, succeeded this one. The program was again extended until 30 April 2021 on December 17th. Sunak revealed that the program has been extended once more, through September 30, 2021, in the United Kingdom’s 2021 budget, which was unveiled on March 3, 2021.
By his own admission, Sunak was concerned about the possible effects on employment and the economy when government medical advisers recommended a second “circuit-breaker” shutdown in September 2020. Then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock asserted that Sunak placed “enormous pressure” on Boris Johnson to refrain from enacting additional limitations during this period, despite Sunak’s insistence that he had just provided the Prime Minister with advice on economic considerations in order to assist him in making a choice.
Sunak issued his third and last budget statement in October 2021, and it contained significant spending commitments for science and education. The budget reduced the post-tax deduction taper rate from 63% to 55% and raised work allowances by £500 annually to provide in-work support under the Universal Credit system. The Levelling Up White Paper announced an investment of £560 million. A number of the budget’s announcements were leaked ahead of time, which infuriated and outraged the House of Commons. Sunak remarked that the budget “begins the work of preparing for a new economy” in response to the criticism.
had participated in a Johnson birthday celebration on June 19, 2020, which constituted a violation of COVID-19 restrictions. Johnson and his spouse Carrie Symonds were among the 82 people who received 125 fixed penalty notices from the police. All of the recipients of the notifications apologized and paid the fines. Sunak said he was “extremely and sincerely sorry” for the damage caused by going to the party and that he accepted the police’s decision to penalize him after receiving the money.
Rishi Sunak Personal life
In August 2009, Sunak married Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty. His father-in-law is the founder of the technology company Infosys, in which Murty owns a stake. Sunak and Murty met while studying at Stanford University in the US; they have two daughters: Krishna (born 2011) and Anoushka (born 2013) Sunak and Murty own several houses, including Kirby Sigston Manor in the village of Kirby Sigston, North Yorkshire, a mews house in Earl’s Court in central London, a flat on the Old Brompton Road, South Kensington, and a penthouse apartment on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, California. In April 2022, it was reported that Sunak and Murty had moved out of the flat above 10 Downing Street to a newly refurbished West London home for domestic reasons. In October 2022, the Sunaks resumed residence of their former official home at 10 Downing Street, this time as prime minister and reversing the trend started in 1997 of prime ministers living in the four-bedroom flat above 11 Downing Street.
Rishi Sunak Wife
In August 2009, Murty married Rishi Sunak, whom she met in 2004 at Stanford University. They have two daughters – Anoushka and Krishna. Rishi Sunak’s wife has given away her shares in a childcare company that was at the heart of a conflict-of-interest row last year. The prime minister apologised for not declaring Akshata Murty’s shares in Koru Kids after appearing before MPs.
Akshata Murty had spent much of her life in the US and India, where her father founded one of the nation’s biggest companies. But in recent years, she is just as likely to have been spotted at a local Tory social event, working the room alongside her husband Rishi Sunak in his North Yorkshire constituency. Mrs Murty’s shares in Infosys, the company her father founded, are worth an estimated £700m.
Also Read : Narendra Modi (Politician) Biography!
Rishi Sunak Controversies
- In April 2022, it was revealed that Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata, who was an Indian citizen had claimed a tax status that allowed her not to pay UK taxes on her overseas income.
- The decision to not pay taxes saved his wife Akshata as much as 20 million euros in a period of 7 years. However, later on she agreed to make a payment of 30,000 euros per year on her dividend earnings from overseas sources.
- Rishi’s love for the UK was also questioned when it was found out that he had held onto a green card for U.S. residency until late October 2021.
- Rishi also faced criticism for his thoughts about trans women in 2022, which he later clarified.
- In April 2022, Rishi was fined by the UK police for violating lockdown laws since he was going to attend a party with Boris Johnson.
Rishi Sunak G20 Visit to India
Rishi Sunak has arrived in Delhi for the G20 summit – a meeting of leaders from the 19 biggest economies in the world plus the European Union. He becomes the first prime minister of Indian heritage to visit the country. No 10 say the “historic” visit will be “a powerful reminder of the living bridge between the two countries”. Mr Sunak is accompanied by his wife Akshata Murty, who was born and grew up in India and is the daughter of one of India’s richest men.
The G20 represents a diplomatic béarnaise. Apart from having large economies, many of its members have very little in common. But uniting the nations that form the backbone of the world economy is precisely its purpose. The G20, which was established in 1999 and gained prominence following the 2008 financial crisis, is a product of the twenty-first century. It indicates that the conversations therein are frequently quite wide. However, the gathering also provides an opportunity for leaders to have “bilaterals,” or one-on-one meetings. Speaking en route to the top, Mr. Sunak described India as “a country that is very near and dear to me” and expressed his excitement at being back.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty visited the Akshardham temple in Delhi on Sunday morning to offer prayers. On the first day of the G20 Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Rishi Sunak on the sidelines of the summit and discussed ways to deepen trade linkages and boost investment. Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty landed in Delhi on Friday to participate in the two-day G20 Summit that commenced on Saturday.
Their arrival was marked by a warm welcome from Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey, who greeted them with a “Jai Siya Ram.” As a token of hospitality, they were presented with Rudraksh beads, a copy of the Bhagavad Geeta, and a Hanuman Chalisa.
Rishi Sunak Interesting Facts
- After Queen Elizabeth’s death, Rishi Sunak became the 1st prime minister to be appointed by King Charles.
- Rishi is also known as the ‘Maharaja of the Dales’ due to his net worth.
- Rishi Sunak is known to be a fan of Southampton Football club and he even snuck a portable television in his school during a EURO final in 1996 to see England play.
- Rishi confirmed during one of his interviews that he is addicted to Coca- Cola
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