Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty will pocket another £10.5 million in dividends today, enough to buy the Prime Minister more than 116,000 pairs of Adidas Sambas, from the Indian tech giant in which she owns a stake.
Murty owns a 0.94% stake in the Indian tech outsourcer Infosys, which was founded by her father N. R. Narayana Murthy. Today, the firm declared a 20 ruppee per share regular dividend plus an additional 8 ruppee special dividend as it announced its 2023 results.
The firm’s revenue came to 379 billion rupees in the fourth quarter of 2024, but its margins disappointed investors.
Infosys typically pays two dividends a year. Last April, Murty received a £6.7 million payout, and she was handed another £6.8 million in November. She has received over £50 million in dividends since the start of 2020, according to an Evening Standard analysis.
At £90 a pair, today’s dividend alone would allow Murty to buy 116,277 pairs of Adidias Sambas for her husband, who was pictured last week wearing the once-popular shoes alongside a pair of suit trousers and dress shirt.
The top rate of dividend tax, at 39.35%, is lower than the top level for income tax.
Murty’s wealth has come under the spotlight since her husband Rishi Sunak first ran to be leader of the Conservative Party in July of 2022. She previously benefited from non-domiciled income tax status, but renounced that status in 2022.
Infosys, an IT outsourcing giant with contracts across the globe is worth more than £50 billion.
Murty and Sunak, who married in 2009, own a string of luxury properties worth an estimated £15 million, from a Pacific Ocean facing penthouse apartment in celebrity enclave Santa Monica, to a rambling Georgian manor house in North Yorkshire.
In London, they own two properties including a five-bedroom mews house in Kensington and pied-à-terre apartment in South Kensington’s Old Brompton Road.
