Rishi Sunak’s wife invested in a furniture firm that received nearly £300,000 in taxpayer-funded loans handed out under policies he put in place while chancellor…reports Asian Lite News
Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, invested in a furniture firm that received nearly £300,000 in taxpayer-funded loans handed out under policies he put in place while chancellor.
The New Craftsmen, whose upmarket range included a £7,340 mirror and a £2,220 table lamp, collapsed into liquidation in November 2022, according to Companies House filings.
The brand was sold later that month to gallery owner Sarah Myerscough and a former company employee.
The unsecured creditors – those who are not guaranteed to receive what they are owed when a company fails – include employees who were owed £75,437, and trade and consumer creditors who were due more than £412,000.
Taxpayers also appear to have lost out in two ways, the filings suggest.
Lloyds Bank had lent The New Craftsmen £37,500 under the Covid bounce-back loan scheme introduced by Sunak in April 2020. The bank is listed among the unsecured creditors, whose claims exceed the assets in the business by £535,863.
The government also held 450,000 shares in the company via the Future Fund. The £250m investment scheme, designed by Sunak, was intended to help small startups ride out the pandemic.
Under the scheme, the government extended loans that would then convert into shares when the companies attracted new funding.
A source familiar with the loan said the government lent The New Craftsmen £250,000, a sum that was matched by private investors. The loan was converted into equity, Company House fillings suggest, the value of which has been wiped out.
As well as the government, the company’s shareholder register included several well-known wealthy investors, with the largest single stake held by Prudence MacLeod, the eldest child of Rupert Murdoch.
Murty also loses out via the 218,785 shares she owned in the business through Catamaran Ventures UK, a vehicle that invests the vast wealth she derives from a 0.91% stake in her father’s Indian IT business, Infosys.
It emerged last year that Murty held “non-dom” tax status, allowing her to legally minimise tax on dividends from Infosys, which were worth £11.5m in the last financial year. She subsequently gave up her non-dom status.
Based on Infosys’ latest share price, the holding makes the prime minister’s wife worth at least £590m.
Murty has invested some of that wealth via Catamaran Ventures, with mixed results. On several occasions she bought stakes in businesses that later collapsed having received taxpayer support, or with outstanding debts to HM Revenue and Customs.
Catamaran held shares in the educational publisher Mrs Wordsmith Limited, which collapsed into administration in March 2021 owing £16.3m, despite having secured £1.3m from the Future Fund. Administrators said that despite furloughing staff, the company had not been able to “resist the pressure” from creditors, including HMRC. Companies House filings showed it owed £249,000 to HMRC.
Murty also held shares personally in Lava Mayfair Club, a private members’ gym that buckled under the weight of Covid restrictions in 2021, with debts to HMRC of £374,000.
Another Catamaran investment, the fitness chain Digme Fitness, fell into administration in 2021, owing more than £6.1m in VAT and PAYE taxes, after having received furlough payments of up to £630,000.
Some of the investment vehicle’s bets have performed better. It owns a stake in the florist Bloom & Wild, as well as New & Lingwood, a tailors that outfits schoolboys at Eton and sells a “psychedelic” silk smoking hat for £125.
Catamaran also holds shares in Dara5, a London-based investment firm co-founded in 2019 by a member of Qatar’s ruling Al-Thani family, and has previously invested in the foetal monitoring business Monica Healthcare, and Hallmarq Veterinary Imaging, which makes MRI scanners for animals including horses.
Murty still holds shares, in her own name, in a restaurants business that used a letterbox company in the tax haven of Mauritius, in a structure that could allow its backers to avoid taxes in India. The company, International Market Management (IMM), hoped to build a chain of dozens of restaurants across India, via franchise agreements with the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and the US fast-food brand Wendy’s.
At the time, the IMM chief executive, Jasper Reid, who manages the venture from New Delhi, said: “This is a standard approach to companies investing in India and is nothing out of the ordinary.”
A former spokesperson for Murty directed inquiries to No 10.
A spokesperson for Ms Murty said she “invests in start-ups, small businesses and entrepreneurs. Her small investment in The New Craftsmen in 2014 was based on her desire to support the British craft industry.
“More than 1.5 million businesses qualified for a Bounce Back Loan during the pandemic.”
