Akshata Murthy, Wife Of Rishi Sunak, Earned Rs 126 Crore Dividend From Infosys In 2022

Akshata Murty, daughter of Infosys Co-founder Narayana Murthy, held 3.89 crore shares, or 0.93 per cent, of Infosys at the end of September, according to company filings with the stock exchanges

Akshata Murty

Source : AFP

New elected UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's wife, Akshata Murty, whose tax status on income from outside the UK had triggered a controversy, earned Rs 126.61 crore ($15.3 million) in dividend income in 2022 from her shareholding in Infosysy, India's second-largest IT company.

Murty, daughter of Infosys Co-founder Narayana Murthy, held 3.89 crore shares, or 0.93 per cent, of Infosys at the end of September, according to company filings with the stock exchanges. According to a report by the PTI, her holding is worth Rs 5,956 crore (about $721 million) at Tuesday's trading price of Rs 1,527.40 on the BSE.

Infosys paid Rs 16 per share final dividend for FY21-22 on May 31, this year. For the current year, the firm this month announced an interim dividend of Rs 16.5, according to the company's stock exchange filings.

The two dividends totalled Rs 32.5 per share or Rs 126.61 crore for Akshata.

Infosys is among the best dividend-paying companies in India. In 2021, it paid a total of Rs 30 per share dividend, which would have given Akshata a total of Rs 119.5 crore in that calendar year.

Sunak, 42, on Sunday won the race to lead the Conservative Party and is now set to become Britain's first prime minister of Indian origin and its youngest leader in modern times. While Sunak is a British national, his wife is an Indian citizen. Her non-domiciled status, which allows her to earn money abroad without paying taxes in Britain for a period of up to 15 years, has been a divisive issue in the UK.

Non-domiciled status of Akshata became an issue of discussion in UK when Sunak first entered the race to become the prime minister in April this year. Her spokesperson had said that as a citizen of India, she was unable to hold citizenship of another country and that "she has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income." As the controversy snowballed, she at that time announced that she would pay UK tax on all of her worldwide earnings out of a "British sense of fairness".

It is not known how much taxes she paid in the UK on the dividend income that accrued to her after April - Rs 16 per share final dividend for the FY21-22 (April 2021 to March 2022) paid on May 31, 2022, and Rs 16.5 a share interim dividend for FY22-23 that is due to be paid on October 27.

Born in her mother Sudha Murthy's hometown of Hubballi in Karnataka, Akshata did her schooling in Bengaluru, before moving to Claremont McKenna College in California, where she graduated with a dual major in economics and French. She did a fashion designing diploma from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, which followed a short work stint at Deloitte and Unilever. Thereafter, she went on to pursue her MBA at Stanford where she met Rishi Sunak.

The two married in 2009. The couple, who own a vast real estate portfolio, has two children, Krishna and Anoushka. They live in a £7 million townhouse in Kensington and also own a flat in Kensington, a mansion in Rishi's Yorkshire constituency and a penthouse in California.

According to Infosys filings, the promoters hold 13.11 per cent of the company. Of this, the Murty family owns 3.6 per cent (Narayana Murthy holds 0.40 per cent stake, his wife Sudha 0.82 per cent, son Rohan 1.45 per cent and daughter Akshata 0.93 per cent). Other promoters include co-founder S Gopalakrishnan, Nandan M Nilekani, and S D Shibulal and their families.