During the school holidays the young Rishi would help with the family finances by working as a waiter at Kuti’s Brasserie, an Indian restaurant near his home.
“He was a great boy, from a very good family, and he worked hard,” says Kuti Miah, a family friend and the flamboyant owner of the restaurant. “There is nobody better to be in his position at the moment, that is a fact.”
After Winchester came Oxford, where Sunak took a first-class degree in PPE, then a City job with Goldman Sachs before he studied for an MBA at Stanford University in California as a Fulbright scholar. It was there he met his wife, Akshata Murty. She, too, had parents who had started with nothing and gone on to generate a legacy for their children – in their case, Infosys, a global giant that made them multi-billionaires.
On his return to Britain, Sunak became a partner at a hedge fund, The Children’s Investment Fund, and then left to help found Theleme Partners, launched in Oct 2010 with $700 million under management.
In the year before he became an MP he was a director of his wife’s investment fund, Catamaran Ventures, which has so far invested more than £4 million in startups. Instead of being encouraged to invest more, she has faced questions about whether she has broken any rules by giving the company what amounts to a tax-free loan.
When he was campaigning to become an MP in 2015, Rishi Sunak liked to tell voters how proud he was that “you can come to this country with very little”, like his parents, and build something that takes your family all the way to Parliament. “For my family,” he said, “the route was education.”
His parents, who thought they were doing the right thing by working hard and giving their children a head-start in life, will no doubt be dismayed at the thought that being a success in business should disbar their son from achieving the ultimate prize of becoming prime minister.
As the current incumbent of Number 10 once said: “Instead of treating business as if it were somehow morally dubious, we Conservatives should celebrate its power to do good.”
Four countries queuing up to attract the super-rich
Tom Rees
