Indian wife of UK finance minister is richer than Britain’s Queen Elizabeth
- Reports that Akshata Murty’s foreign earnings are shielded from British tax authorities have added to the pressures for her embattled husband
- She owns shares worth almost US$1 billion in Infosys, the tech giant her father founded, the first Indian company to list on Wall Street
Akshata Murty, the Indian wife of embattled British finance minister Rishi Sunak, daughter of a self-made tech billionaire and a formidable engineer and philanthropist mother, is richer than Queen Elizabeth.
Sunak, once seen as a future prime minister, has seen his popularity sink because of surging consumer prices, while recent reports that Murty’s foreign earnings are shielded from British tax authorities have added to the pressure.
Her father, N.R. Narayana Murthy, 75, co-founded tech giant Infosys in 1981, the outsourcing behemoth that helped drive India’s remarkable transformation into the “back office of the world”.
Borrowing 10,000 rupees (US$130) from his wife Sudha to help create it, the firm is now worth around US$100 billion and was the first Indian company to list on Wall Street.
One of only two non-Americans in Fortune magazine’s 2012 list of the “12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time”, the Infosys chief’s life-changing moment came in 1974 when he was locked up for four nights in communist Eastern Europe.
