- Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife’s net worth is nearing $1 billion—but he’s not kicking up his feet and retiring any time soon. The Gen X politician has just rejoined investment firm Goldman Sachs as a senior advisor. Despite the role’s likelihood to come with a hefty salary, Sunak has promised to donate this pay to his new charity, The Richmond Project.
Like millions of Gen Z, former British prime minister Rishi Sunak spent the last year on the job hunt, after voters ousted him from 10 Downing Street following a landslide electoral defeat for his party.
Although he’s still working within the government, the 45-year-old has wasted no time in calling up his network for another gig. On Tuesday, Sunak rejoined investment banking firm Goldman Sachs as a senior advisor.
“I am excited to welcome Rishi back to Goldman Sachs in his new capacity as a Senior Advisor,” said Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon in a press release.
Sunak is set to advise clients globally on a range of macroeconomic and geopolitical issues as well as contribute to a culture of “ongoing learning and development” with Goldman employees around the world. While the company declined to share Sunak’s new salary, his pay will be donated to The Richmond Project, a newly launched charity by him and his wife—Akshata Murty—to improve numeracy skills in the U.K. However, it’s unclear whether his wife will take home a salary as a trustee. As a newly registered charity, it has not yet published any financial accounts.
Fortune reached out to Sunak for further comment.
Rishi Sunak is even wealthier than King Charles III thanks to family investments and his prime minister role
Sunak and Murty’s net worth totals about £640 million ($871 million), according to The Sunday Times Rich List. Their family is the wealthiest to have called 10 Downing Street home—and are even richer than King Charles III. This is thanks largely to Murty’s 0.94% stake in Infosys, the Indian IT giant co-founded by her billionaire father. With a market cap of about $78 billion, her stake is worth about $740 million—about 85% of the couple’s net worth.
In fact, Murty has also invested in a number of British start-ups, like the gentlemen’s outfitters New & Lingwood, which sells silk dressing gowns for £2,500 (about $3,400), adding to their household’s wealth.
On top of the lucrative dividends paid from their investment portfolio, the family has gained recent income from Sunak’s role at the Washington Speakers Bureau. In April and May of this year, he received a total of £505,661 ($668,000) for three separate appearances, including a speaking engagement for Bain Capital.
Throughout Sunak’s decade of serving in the British parliament, he earned a salary ranging between £66,365 and £86,584—the latter being his 2023-2024 payout, which translates to about $110,000 based on the exchange rate at the time. It’s a source of income he’s likely to continue to bring in as the representative for the northern U.K. region of Richmond and Northallerton.
Of course, being prime minister further enhanced Sunak’s wealth. Between April 2022 and March 2023, he earned £139,000 (about $167,000) from his salary as a member of parliament, finance minister and prime minister, and £2.1 million (about $2.5 million) from investments, according to accounting data reported by Reuters.
In the U.K., former prime ministers are also entitled to public financial support of up to £115,000 (about $156,200) a year to reimburse “incurred expenses for necessary administrative costs arising from their special position in public life.”
How Rishi Sunak made his first million
Sunak’s latest gig is a full circle moment: Before he entered politics or even attended Stanford, he began his career working for Goldman, as an intern—and then in an analyst role. He later served as a partner at two other hedge funds.
The Gen Xer first hit multimillionaire status in his late 20s, when as a hedge fund manager, he shared a £100 million pot after a lucrative bet in the buildup to the global financial crisis.
In a joint commencement speech with Murty at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (where the couple first met back in 2004), Sunak told graduates that key to finding success is being adept at both what the data and own instinct is telling you.
“As you progress in your own careers, learn to listen to your intuition with as much respect and rigor as you do the analysis because if you want to lead it’s not a question of data or intuition you’ve got to get comfortable with both,” Sunak said.
