Sunaks' wealth rises to £651m in latest Sunday Times Rich List
3 Min Read
The UK Prime Minister's wealth rises to £651m, two months after accepting a raise amid the UK's deteriorating economy and cost of living crisis.
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Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions in Parliament in London on May 15, 2024. (AP)
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty's wealth increased by £122 million last year, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
The couple's fortune was estimated at £651 million in the latest Sunday Times Rich List, up from £529 million in 2023. This increase is primarily attributed to Akshata Murty's shares in Infosys, the Indian IT giant co-founded by her father.
According to the annual list of the UK's most wealthy people, it means they are richer than the King.
Charles III was ranked higher than the Sunak family last year, but his fortune is estimated to have grown more modestly over the past year, increasing by £10 million to a total of £610 million.
Read next: Sunak confesses taking money from deprived areas for political gain
The Sunak family's fortune was also ranked higher than the late Queen's in 2022 - with Elizabeth II's personal fortune that year evaluated at £370m. However, estimating the personal fortunes of monarchs is tricky. The wider wealth of the monarchy, including various estates and palaces, has been estimated at dozens of billions of pounds.
Sunak became the first front-line politician to feature on the Sunday Times' annual wealth list in its 35-year history, when he appeared as chancellor in the 2022 edition. At that point, the family's wealth was estimated at £730m.
UK to have weakest-performing economy
Sunak's listing comes amid trouble in the UK's economy.
Earlier this month, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Britain will have the weakest economic performance among G7 countries next year, attributing it to high interest rates and the lasting impacts of last year's inflation surge.
The think tank also downgraded its forecast for British economic growth from 0.7 percent last November to 0.4 percent.
The OECD added that the UK will plunge to the bottom of G7 economic growth rates in 2025 with a growth of 1 percent, directly behind Germany at 1.1 percent. Meanwhile, the United States and Canada will top the chart as the fastest-growing member economies at 1.8 percent.
Additionally, it is crucial to mention that the rate of homeless people in the United Kingdom increased by 15.8% between October and December 2023 compared to the same period in 2022 amid a housing crisis in the country, the UK Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities said in a report.
"Between October to December 2023 [...] 44,760 households were initially assessed as homeless and therefore owed a relief duty, up 15.8% from the same quarter last year," the report said earlier this month.
