Business
The wealthy millennial who rocketed to power
At just 42, Rishi Sunak is the youngest prime minister in modern times – taking the record held by his old boss David Cameron, who was 43 when appointed.
His rise to the top has been fast. He only became MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire in 2015 and joined the Cabinet in 2019.
“I showed up and people were surprised,” Mr Sunak said about being selected to represent Richmond, with its overwhelming white population. But his “Yorkshire values” of hard work resonated with people and he won them over by showing an interest in what mattered to them, he said.
Mr Sunak joined Boris Johnson’s Cabinet in 2019 as chief treasury to the secretary working with chancellor Sajid Javid, and his career rocketed from there.
A self-confessed “huge Star Wars fan” with a sizeable collection of lightsabers, he once tweeted a photo of himself and his “Jedi Master” Mr Javid at a screening of The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. A few months later, the apprentice became the master when he replaced Javid as Chancellor, and was plunged into pandemic crisis planning and budgeting.
But in July, he resigned from the Cabinet, saying he felt his own approach to the economy was “fundamentally too different” to that of the PM. Just 16 weeks later, he has now become leader himself.
His appointment as PM came on the day millions celebrated Diwali, and as a practising Hindu he has said one of his proudest career moments was lighting ceremonial diyas (oil lamps) outside 11 Downing Street while Chancellor.
For quite a few people, this teetotal millennial – he had his 40th birthday during the first lockdown – appeared to be a reassuringly steady hand at the tiller as Chancellor.
Rishi Sunak: The basics
Age: 42
Place of birth: Southampton
Home: London and Yorkshire
Education: Winchester College, Oxford University, Stanford University
Family: Married to businesswoman Akshata Murty with two daughters
Parliamentary constituency: Richmond (Yorkshire)
When he pledged to do “whatever it takes” to help people through the pandemic in the spring of 2020 – and unveiled support worth £350bn – his personal poll ratings went through the roof.
But the UK continued to be buffeted by stormy economic weather, and Mr Sunak himself had to deal with the fallout of being fined by police for breaking lockdown rules in Downing Street in June 2020.
In April, some Conservative critics questioned whether the multimillionaire – thought to be the richest MP in parliament – had grasped the scale of the cost-of-living squeeze facing struggling households.
In that month, the finances of Mr Sunak and his family came under intense scrutiny, with the tax affairs of his wife Akshata Murty – the daughter of Narayana Murthy, Indian billionaire and co-founder of IT services giant Infosys – placed in the spotlight.
She later announced she would start paying UK tax on her overseas earnings to relieve political pressure on her husband.
But the scandal does not appear to have dented his popularity within Parliament. Newsnight’s political editor Nick Watt says his colleagues find him “very personable”, but also someone who is “very clear and certain in what he thinks”.
For example, in the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum – in which he campaigned to Leave – he was called into Downing Street and asked for his support to remain in the EU but he refused.
“He said ‘No, I think Brexit is the right thing to do’ – which is quite a thing for a newly-elected MP to say to Downing Street.”
Mr Sunak told the Yorkshire Post he believed leaving the EU would make the UK “freer, fairer and more prosperous”.
He said changing immigration rules was another key reason for his Leave vote: “I believe that appropriate immigration can benefit our country. But we must have control of our borders.”
To become PM within seven years of entering politics is highly unusual. From 2001 to 2004, Mr Sunak was an analyst for Goldman Sachs and was later a partner in two hedge funds.
His supporters hope his eye for statistics and data will put the economy in safe hands.
Mr Sunak’s parents came to the UK from east Africa and are both of Indian origin.
He was born in Southampton in 1980, where his father was a GP, and his mother ran her own pharmacy.
“In terms of cultural upbringing, I’d be at the temple at the weekend – I’m a Hindu – but I’d also be at [Southampton Football Club] the Saints game as well on a Saturday – you do everything, you do both.”
In the interview he said he had been fortunate not to have endured a lot of racism growing up, but that there was one incident that had stayed with him.
“I was just out with my younger brother and younger sister, and I think, probably pretty young, I was probably a mid-teenager, and we were out at a fast food restaurant and I was just looking after them. There were people sitting nearby, it was the first time I’d experienced it, just saying some very unpleasant things. The ‘P’ word.”
“And it stung. I still remember it. It seared in my memory. You can be insulted in many different ways.”
However, he said he “can’t conceive of that happening today” in the UK.
He attended the exclusive private school Winchester College – working as a waiter at a Southampton curry house during his summer holidays – then went to Oxford to study philosophy, politics and economics.
While studying for an MBA at Stanford University he met his wife. The couple have two daughters.
During the previous leadership campaign, he often mentioned his daughters in the context of climate change. Answering a question on climate change during a BBC TV debate, Mr Sunak said he took “advice from my two young daughters, who are the experts of this in my household”.
Reports /TrainViral/
The prospective new owner of Royal Mail has said he will not walk away from the requirement to deliver letters throughout the UK six days a week, as long as he is running the service.
“As long as I’m alive, I completely exclude this,” Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky told the BBC.
Mr Kretinsky has had a £3.6bn offer for Royal Mail accepted by its board.
Shareholders are expected to approve the deal in the coming months, but the government also has a say over whether it goes ahead.
Currently the Universal Service Obligation (USO) requires Royal Mail to deliver letters six days a week throughout the country for the same price. But questions have been raised over whether the service could be reduced in the future.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Mr Kretinsky also said he would be willing to share profits with employees, if given the go-ahead to buy the group.
However, he appeared to reject the idea of employees having a stake in Royal Mail, which unions have called for in exchange for their support.
The Royal Mail board agreed a £3.6bn takeover offer from Mr Kretinsky in May for the 500-year-old organisation, which employs more than 150,000 people. Including assumed debts, the offer is worth £5bn.
But because Royal Mail is a nationally important company, the government has the power to scrutinise and potentially block the deal.
As well as keeping the new government on side, Mr Kretinsky also faces the task of convincing postal unions that the proposed deal will benefit employees.
The USO is a potential sticking point for both the government and unions.
Royal Mail is required by law to deliver letters six days a week and parcels five days a week to every address in the UK for a fixed price.
How well this has actually been working in practice is a different matter. Ten years ago, 92% of first class post arrived on time. By the end of last year it was down to 74%, according to the regulator Ofcom.
Last year the regulator fined Royal Mail £5.6m for failing to meet its delivery targets.
Royal Mail has been pushing for this obligation to be watered down. It wants to cut second class letter deliveries to every other weekday, saying this will save £300m, and lead to “fewer than 1,000” voluntary redundancies.
‘Unconditional commitment’
Mr Kretinsky has committed in writing to honouring the USO, but only for five years.
And after that, in theory, the new owners could just walk away from it.
However, Mr Kretinsky told the BBC: “As long as I’m alive, I completely exclude this, and I’m sure that anybody that would be my successor would absolutely understand this.
“I say this as an absolutely clear, unconditional commitment: Royal Mail is going to be the provider of Universal Service Obligation in the UK, I would say forever, as long as the service is going to be needed, and as long as we are going to be around.”
Mr Kretinsky added that the written five-year commitment was “the longest commitment that has ever been offered in a situation like this”.
Another potential stumbling block for the deal, however, is how the company will be structured.
Unions would like to see the company renationalised, but Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), told the BBC that would be “difficult in the current political and economic environment”.
Instead, what the CWU is pushing for is “a different model of ownership” – that is, where the employees part-own the business.
To get its support for the takeover, the union wants employees to share ownership of the company, along with other concessions including board representation for workers.
It says profit sharing is “not going to be enough to deliver our support and the support of the workforce”.
If the union doesn’t get what it wants, it won’t rule out industrial action, Mr Ward said. Its members went on strike in 2022 and 2023.
Although Mr Kretinsky said he is “very open” to profit sharing, he is not in favour of shared ownership.
“I don’t think the ownership stake is the right model,” he said. “The logic is: share of profit, yes, [but an] ownership structure creates a lot of complexity.
“For instance, what happens if the employee leaves? He has shares, he is leaving, he is not working for the company, he [still] needs remunerating.”
Mr Kretinsky said he didn’t want to create “some anonymous structure” but instead “remunerate the people who are working for the company, and creating value for the company”.
The union is also concerned about job losses and changes to the terms and conditions of postal workers’ contracts.
Mr Kretinsky has guaranteed no compulsory redundancies or changes in terms and conditions but only until 2025.
“If we are more successful, and we have more parcels to be delivered, we need not less people, but we need more people,” he said. “So really, job cuts are not part of our plan at all.”
He said if the management, union and employees work together, “we will be successful”.
Another concern is the potential break-up of the business.
The profit for Royal Mail’s parent company last year was entirely generated by its German and Canadian logistics and parcels business, GLS. Royal Mail itself made a loss.
Mr Kretinsky has promised not to split off GLS or load the parent company with excessive debt, although borrowings will rise if the deal goes through.
But he has a way to go to convince the CWU.
“I can’t think of any other country in the world that would just just hand over its entire postal service to an overseas equity investor,” Mr Ward of the CWU said.
However, Mr Kretinsky said that the postal unions “do understand that we are on the same ship, and that we need this ship to be successful, and that if we are there, we don’t have any real problems to deal with, because the sky is blue, and it’s blue for everybody.”
The union cannot stop this deal but the government can block it under the National Security and Investment Act.
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has said he will scrutinise the assurances and guarantees given and called on Mr Kretinsky to work constructively with the unions.
Mr Kretinsky may say that he and the unions are ultimately on the same ship but, as things stand, they are not on the same page.
Who is Daniel Kretinsky?
Daniel Kretinsky started his career as a lawyer in his hometown of Brno, before moving to Prague.
He then made serious money in Central and Eastern European energy interests.
This includes Eustream, which transports Russian gas via pipelines that run through Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
He then diversified into other investments, including an almost 10% stake in UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s and a 27% share in Premier League club West Ham United.
The Czech businessman is worth about £6bn, according to reports.
Father of five blasted for leashing kids, gives them odd nickname
This heartwarming prom story goes viral again and we all understand why
Simon Cowell Won’t Leave Son His $600 M Fortune; Says If He or Future Children Wants to “Start a Business … I’ll Invest. They Aren’t Getting Trusts”
Five wedding outfits for just £29!
Mikhail Gorbachev changed history
Tracking the war with Russia
-
Fashion2 years agoFive wedding outfits for just £29!
-
Politics2 years agoMikhail Gorbachev changed history
-
Politics2 years agoTracking the war with Russia
-
Everything About Youtube2 years agoThe Twitter Artist who makes a Fortune off YouTube Thumbnails while Studying.
-
Fashion2 years agoOn presents first ever shoe made from carbon
-
Politics2 years agoCharles is announced to be the new King
-
Tech2 years agoThe rise of the AI artists stirs debate
-
Everything About Youtube2 years agoEveryone knows YouTube, but not how it works.