[News Inside Companies] Which Indian Tech Giant Has the UK New Prime Minister's Son-in-Law?…Father-in-Law Called "IT Tsar"

Sunak Couple Enters UK Rich List
Wife Murthy, Child of Infosys Founder
Public Criticism Over Tax Avoidance Allegations

One of the co-founders of Infosys, Narayana Murthy. [Image source=Infosys SNS screenshot]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Ji-eun] Rishi Sunak, a former British Treasury Secretary of Indian descent, has become the 57th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, bringing attention to his background and the source of his wealth. According to data released this year by The Times, the couple's combined wealth is ?730 million (approximately 1.19 trillion KRW), ranking them 222nd on the list of the richest people in the UK.

A significant factor in Sunak's accumulation of vast wealth is his wife, Akshata Murty. Murty is the daughter of Narayana Murty, the founder of the Indian IT giant Infosys, and most of the assets declared by Sunak come from shares in Infosys.

Infosys is an IT outsourcing company established in 1981 by seven co-founders, including Chairman Narayana Murty, with a capital of $1,000. In its early days, the company engaged in outsourced services such as call centers but rose to global prominence after launching a program to solve the Year 2000 (Y2K) computer error problem in 2000.

In March 1999, Infosys became the first Indian company to be listed on the U.S. Nasdaq stock exchange. Since then, it has expanded into various fields such as IT infrastructure services and software development, growing into a company with annual sales of $16.3 billion (approximately 23.45 trillion KRW) as of last year. Infosys's market capitalization is $72 billion (approximately 103.56 trillion KRW), making it the second-largest Indian IT company by market cap after Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

Sunak's father-in-law, Narayana Murty, is known as the "Bill Gates of India." The Times of India reported in 2005 that when Bill Gates and Narayana Murty held a joint discussion in India, they were referred to as the "Tsars (Emperors) of the IT industry."

Infosys is considered a rare example in India of a company that does not practice hereditary management. It operates under the management philosophy of being a "company free from its founders" and avoids family-run management. In fact, the combined shares of the founding members amount to only 16.4%, while foreign institutional investors hold a much larger share of 35%.

Among these, Sunak's wife Murty holds shares worth ?690 million (1.1268 trillion KRW). The couple is known to own four homes valued at 24.4 billion KRW, including a penthouse located in Los Angeles, USA.

Murty faced criticism after it was revealed that she had inherited billions of dollars from her father and was avoiding paying taxes by leveraging her Indian nationality. According to the BBC, Murty paid about ?30,000 annually in taxes but is estimated to have evaded ?2.1 million (approximately 340 million KRW) in taxes.

In response to allegations of tax evasion against Murty, former Prime Minister Sunak strongly denied the accusations, stating that it was unfair to attack his wife, who is not a public official. In July, he appeared on a debate program on the British private broadcaster ITV and said, "I am a British taxpayer who pays taxes diligently," adding, "My wife is treated differently because she comes from another country, but we fully explained and resolved this issue earlier this spring."

He continued, "My father-in-law was born penniless and went on to establish the world's largest company employing thousands of people in the UK," expressing pride in what his in-laws have built. As the controversy intensified, Murty pledged to pay taxes on her overseas income but announced plans to maintain her Indian nationality and long-term foreign resident status.

Meanwhile, Indian media also expressed great excitement over Sunak's election as the next Prime Minister. The Times of India mentioned that Sunak is a Hindu and stated, "Prime Minister Sunak is expected to invigorate the development of relations between the UK and India," expressing hope that his appointment would advance the stalled UK-India trade agreement.

Other major Indian media outlets such as Hindustan Times and India Today also prominently covered the news of Sunak's election.

On the other hand, Sunak was confirmed as the next leader of the Conservative Party and the next Prime Minister on the 24th (local time) after his rival, Penny Mordaunt, the House of Commons Chief Whip, withdrew her candidacy before the deadline for registering candidates in the UK Conservative Party (Tory Party) leadership election.

Sunak, who comes from an Indian immigrant family, is an elite who graduated from the UK's top private school, studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford, and completed an MBA at Stanford University in the United States. He worked in finance before entering politics in 2015.