UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty lost about $61 million (£49 million) on Monday after shares in Infosys fell by 9.4 percent, Bloomberg reported. Murty owns a 0.94 percent stake in the tech giant co-founded by her father Narayana Murthy.
Infosys's shares nosedived on Monday after its guidance painted a negative outlook for India’s technology sector, which led to a wave of downgrades by brokers. It was the company's biggest tumble since March 2020.
This, however, is only a fraction of the Sunak family's wealth as Akshata Murty’s stake in Infosys is still worth about Rs 6,000 crore.
While Rishi Sunak’s office declined to comment, Murty’s wealth has been a recurring theme in her husband’s political career. In 2022, Murty earned Rs 126.61 crore in dividend income from her shares in Infosys. It was also last year that the couple faced backlash after it emerged that Murty held non-domicile status in the UK and hadn’t been paying tax on overseas earnings.
At that time, her spokesperson had stated that as a citizen of India, she was unable to hold citizenship of another country and that "she has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income."
As the controversy snowballed, she at that time announced that she would pay UK tax on all of her worldwide earnings out of a "British sense of fairness".
Meanwhile, Sunak is facing a watchdog inquiry under his parliamentary declaration of interest obligations related to a Budget policy that could benefit his wife through her business interest in a childcare firm, it emerged on Monday.
While Sunak has stated that all his disclosures were "declared in the normal way," the parliamentary watchdog's investigation will decide if there has been any breach of the code.
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