Sunak's wife Akshata Murty to liquidate investment venture in UK

Akshata Murty, the wife of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has chosen to dissolve her investment firm, Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, as indicated by recent filings with the UK's Companies House.

The 43-year-old businesswoman had incorporated the venture in 2013 with her husband as one of the directors, before he resigned in 2015.

According to the latest financial statement for the year ended December 2022 available for the company on Wednesday, Murty as the only director of the firm has now decided to wind down her firm as a going concern.

"During the year, the directors have decided to liquidate the Company,” notes the Companies House filing statement.

"Accordingly, the financial statements have been prepared on a basis other than going concern and no adjustments were necessary in these financial statements to reduce assets to their realisable values or to provide for liabilities arising from that decision,” it reads.

The value of the company's investments for the period was stated at just over GBP 3.8 million, up from just over GBP 3.5 million in 2021 and the funds becoming due to Murty amounted to just over GBP 4.6 million.

Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd has been operating as an investment vehicle for funds from her shares in Infosys, the Indian software giant co-founded by her father N.R. Narayana Murthy. However, the ventures it has invested in have not had the best run.

According to an analysis by ‘The Times’ newspaper, education start-up Mrs Wordsmith backed by Catamaran closed less than six months after receiving GBP 650,000 from the UK government's pandemic support scheme called Future Fund.

The New Craftsmen, a Catamaran-backed furniture company which closed in November 2022, also benefited from the fund. And, Digme Fitness, a boutique London fitness chain of which Murty was a director, failed in 2021.

Study Hall, an education technology business in which Catamaran has a stake, was given a government grant of GBP 349,976 via state body Innovate UK last year, prompting questions from the Opposition Labour Party benches.

Murty's investments outside Catamaran also came under the spotlight this year when it emerged she had shares in Koru Kids – one of six childminder agencies in England that stood to benefit from a new Budget scheme announced by the Sunak-led government. It led to a declaration of interest inquiry by the UK parliamentary watchdog, which concluded last month that Sunak’s failure to reference his wife’s shares in Koru Kids arose out of “confusion and was accordingly inadvertent”.

"I apologise for these inadvertent errors and confirm acceptance of your proposal for rectification,” Sunak wrote in a letter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg.

(With agency inputs)