It is official. Rishi Sunak is no longer the British Prime Minister. His long and winding road to exit door number 10 has felt inevitable since he took over from Liz Truss’ economically disastrous, short-lived government in the fall of 2022.
But Sunak, 44, was reportedly found riding off into the Californian sunset on his Peloton before the results came in, he’s more likely to lick his lips about the future that awaits him than to brood over what could have happened with another five years in office.
That’s because Sunak, a man who is technically richer than the King of England, with a past as a high-flying London banker, can prepare for some more lucrative perks as he leaves a life of servitude behind him.
Sunak’s millions
As Prime Minister, Sunak was entitled to a salary of £80,000, in addition to his £91,346 salary as MP for his Richmond and Northallerton constituency. Show tax information that he took home £139,000 ($177,000) from those roles last year.
His pay package for running Britain is a paltry sum compared to what he was used to before entering politics and even his other forms of income while in the job. Sunak earned almost £1.8 million in capital gains last year and paid a total of £500,000 in tax.
Sunak worked for years as a successful banker, starting at Goldman Sachs before earning an MBA and returning to the lucrative hedge fund world.
According to an analysis of financial careersSunak probably only earned less than £100,000 in his first three years at university.
While working at the hedge fund TCI between 2006 and 2009, in his mid-20s, Sunak became a multi-millionaire after he and his colleagues shared a £100m pot following a lucrative bet in the run-up to the global financial crisis.
The hedge fund took an activist position with Dutch bank ABN Amro in 2007 and forced its sale to Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), resulting in a profit of £555.9 million. However, that takeover saddled the Scottish bank with debt, leading to a £45.5 billion government bailout.
While Sunak’s greatest wealth will likely come after he eventually steps down as an MP, there are several new sources of income he can eventually look forward to.
There are indications that when Sunak returns to the financial world after leaving politics, he will be in high demand.
Sunak’s fellow former chancellor George Osbourne has made new millions through city advisory roles at the… Black rock And Robey Warsawin addition to his time editing London Evening Standard newspaper.
Or he could take a careful lesson from David Cameron. The man who was prime minister between 2010 and 2016 got into trouble for his role in the bankrupt financial group Greensill Capital.
Cameron Reportedly received $10 million from Greensill to lobby the government on the company’s behalf, but its spokesman disputed that figure.
Speaking engagements
Sunak’s easiest mileage in his bank account after leaving office will likely come from his years of training as a public speaker.
Tony Blair, the ninth longest-serving prime minister of all time, reportedly set a milestone after retiring with a £1 million order in a month in 2012 of his engagements. His Tory successors were keen to follow this trend.
In the year between his resignation as Prime Minister and his resignation as MP, the mercurial Boris Johnson raked in millions of dollars from extracurricular activities as he settled into post-leadership life.
Documents from May 2023 show that Johnson received around £3.5 million for speaking engagements after he resigned as Prime Minister. He also received a £510,000 advance on a book deal. Theresa May, Johnson’s predecessor, has also been enjoying the speaking circuit since quitting as prime minister in 2019.
Family wealth
What makes Sunak unique among his contemporaries, however, is that the Prime Minister will never have to work again.
Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, are worth £651 million ($830 million) together, according to the latest figures. Sunday Times Rich Listwhich made him richer King Charles.
The vast majority of that wealth comes from Murty’s interests in the Indian IT company Infosys, which her billionaire father co-founded.
Murty’s wealth was a major point of contention during Sunak’s premiership due to her ‘non-dom’ status, which meant she paid no tax on income from shares in overseas Infosys. Murty promised to pay British tax on this after a media storm.
Sunak will remain an MP until he decides otherwise, like Boris Johnson or David Cameron before him.
But if he leaves, the man who led the Tories to their worst defeat in almost two centuries will quickly be absorbed into a multimillion-dollar corporate cushion shared by most of his former allies.
