Background and career
Rishi Sunak (born 12 May 1980) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2022 to 2024. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022 under Boris Johnson, and briefly served as Leader of the Opposition from July to November 2024 following his defeat in the 2024 general election. Sunak has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond and Northallerton, previously Richmond (Yorks), since 2015. Sunak was born in Southampton to Indian parents who immigrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s. He was educated at Winchester College and then studied philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford University in California as a Fulbright Scholar. During his time at Oxford, Sunak joined the Conservatives. After graduating, he worked for Goldman Sachs and later as a partner at two hedge fund firms. Sunak was elected to the House of Commons at the 2015 general election. As a backbencher, he supported the successful campaign for Brexit in the 2016 European Union membership referendum. He was appointed to the junior ministerial position of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government by Theresa May in 2018 and was appointed to the cabinet-attending role of Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Johnson in 2019. In 2020, Sunak was promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer. During his time in the post, Sunak was prominent in the government's financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact, including the furlough and Eat Out to Help Out schemes and the cost-of-living crisis. As chancellor, Sunak received high approval and popularity ratings in the early stages of the pandemic, although his popularity later declined amid the cost-of-living crisis of 2022. He resigned as chancellor in July 2022 amid a government crisis, and lost the subsequent party leadership election to Liz Truss that September. After spending the whole duration of the premiership of Liz Truss on the backbenches, Sunak was elected unopposed in the leadership election to succeed Truss the following October; aged 42 at the time he became prime minister, Sunak became the youngest prime minister since the Earl of Liverpool in 1812. During his premiership, Sunak attempted to improve the economy and stabilise national politics. He outlined five key priorities: halving inflation, growing the economy, cutting debt, reducing National Health Service waiting lists, and stopping small-boat crossings of the English Channel by enacting the Rwanda asylum plan. On foreign policy, Sunak authorised foreign aid and weapons shipments to Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion of the country, and pledged support for Israel after the 7 October attacks and subsequent Gaza war whilst later calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. He was unable to avert further unpopularity for the Conservatives, reflected in the party's poor performances in the 2023 and 2024 local elections. Sunak called a general election for July 2024 despite being widely expected to call the election in the autumn; the Conservatives lost this election in a landslide to the opposition Labour Party led by Keir Starmer, ending 14 years of Conservative government. After leaving the prime minister's office, Sunak became Leader of the Opposition and remained Conservative leader for nearly four months while the leadership election to replace him took place, and formed a shadow cabinet. He was succeeded by Kemi Badenoch, his Shadow Housing Secretary. He remains a backbench MP, and may take some outside work that is publicly reported. In 2025 he also took a position as a part-time senior advisor with one of his previous employers, Goldman Sachs, with some limits on his lobbying abilities.
Rishi Sunak was born on 12 May 1980 at the Southampton General Hospital in Southampton, in Hampshire, England, to East African-born Indian parents. Sunak's family are Punjabi Hindus. Rishi is the eldest of three siblings. His brother is a psychologist and his sister works in New York as chief of strategy and planning at Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations Global Fund for Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crises. His father was born in the Kenya Colony in 1949, and was a general practitioner in the National Health Service (NHS). Sunak's mother was born in the Tanganyika Territory (modern-day Tanzania), and was a pharmacist who owned the Sunak Pharmacy in Southampton between 1995 and 2014, and has a degree from Aston University. Sunak's grandparents were born in the Punjab Province of British India and migrated to British protectorates in East Africa, prior to the Partition of India in 1947. His paternal grandfather, Ramdas Sunak, migrated from Gujranwala in West Punjab to Nairobi in 1935. His maternal grandfather, Raghubir Berry, was born in Ludhiana in East Punjab, and moved to Dar es Salaam as an engineer.
Both of Sunak's parents had moved to the UK in 1966. While in the UK, they met and eventually married in 1977. Sunak lived in Portswood but moved to Bassett, after the birth of his younger brother and sister. He attended Stroud School, a preparatory school in Romsey, and subsequently attended Winchester College as a day-boy, becoming head boy of the college. He worked as a waiter, at the curry house Kuti's Brasserie in Southampton, during his summer holidays. He read philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College of the University of Oxford, graduating with first-class honours in 2001. During his time at university, he undertook an internship at Conservative Campaign Headquarters and joined the Conservative Party. Sunak attended Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar, earning a Master of Business Administration degree in 2006.
Following an internship in 2000, Sunak worked as an analyst for investment bank Goldman Sachs between 2001 and 2004. He then worked for hedge fund management firm The Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI) from September 2006 to November 2009. He left the fund to join former colleagues in California at a new hedge fund firm, Theleme Partners, which launched in October 2010 with $700 million under management. At both hedge funds, he directly reported to Patrick Degorce. Sunak was a director of the investment firm Catamaran Ventures, owned by his father-in-law, the Indian businessman N. R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys, between 2013 and 2015.
Sunak was selected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond (Yorks) in October 2014. The seat was previously held by William Hague. In the same year Sunak was head of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit of the conservative think tank Policy Exchange, for which he co-wrote a report on BME communities in the UK. He was elected as MP for the constituency at the 2015 general election with a majority of 19,550 (36.2%). During the 2015–2017 Parliament he was a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee. Sunak supported the successful campaign to leave the European Union in the 2016 European Union membership referendum, criticising the EU's immigration laws: "We are discriminating against countries with whom we have ties of history, language and culture" That year, he wrote a report for the Thatcherite think tank Centre for Policy Studies supporting the establishment of free ports after Brexit, and the following year wrote a report advocating the creation of a retail bond market for small and medium-sized enterprises. Following Cameron's resignation, Sunak endorsed Michael Gove in the 2016 Conservative Party leadership election, and later endorsed successful candidate Theresa May after Gove was eliminated in the second round of voting. Sunak was re-elected at the 2017 general election with an increased majority of 23,108 (40.5%). In the same year, Sunak wrote a paper for Policy Exchange on the importance and fragility of the UK's undersea infrastructure. Sunak was re-elected at the 2019 general election with an increased majority of 27,210 (47.2%). Following boundary changes in the 2024 general election, Sunak won the seat of Richmond and Northallerton, which replaced his former seat of Richmond (Yorks), with a majority of 23,059 (51.4).
Sunak was appointed to a junior ministerial position in May's second government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government in the 2018 cabinet reshuffle. Sunak voted for May's Brexit withdrawal agreement on all three occasions, and voted against a second referendum on any withdrawal agreement. May's withdrawal agreement was rejected by Parliament three times, leading to May announcing her resignation in May 2019. Sunak supported Boris Johnson's successful bid to succeed May in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election and co-wrote an article with fellow MPs Robert Jenrick and Oliver Dowden to advocate for Johnson during the campaign in June.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
