Akshata Murty Losses Over Rs 500 Crore in One Day As Infosys Shares Tumble 9.4%; Details

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty experienced a paper loss of approximately £49 million (over Rs 500 crore) after shares in Infosys Ltd, the Indian software giant co-founded by her father, Narayana Murthy, dropped 9.4 per cent on Monday.

Infosys saw its biggest intraday percentage drop since October 2019, and dragged other IT stocks, with the Nifty IT index dropping as much as 7.6 per cent.

After opening with a gap-down, Infosys shares slipped 12 per cent in intraday trade. The stock recovered towards the end of the session and closed at Rs 1259 forming a hammer candlestick pattern on daily charts. The last time Infosys shares hit a lower circuit was on March 23, 2020.

According to a Bloomberg report, Murty’s stake in Infosys is still more than $450 million. Akshata Murty owns a 0.95 per cent stake in Infosys. Sunak has often been criticised for his wife’s ‘non-domicile’ status in the UK and the opposition has often targeted him citing that Murty did not declare her earnings from Infosys dividend for tax purposes in the UK.

While Rishi Sunak’s office declined to comment, Murty’s wealth has been a recurring theme in her husband’s political career. In 2022, Murty earned Rs 126.61 crore in dividend income from her shares in Infosys. It was also last year that the couple faced backlash after it emerged that Murty held non-domicile status in the UK and hadn’t been paying tax on overseas earnings.

At that time, her spokesperson had stated that as a citizen of India, she was unable to hold citizenship of another country and that “she has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income.”

Monday’s volatility in Infosys share may be viewed on the backdrop of Infosys Q4 results which were announced last week. The company posted weaker-than-expected results and analysts believe that Monday’s reaction was a knee-jerk response to Infosys Q4 results in which the company reported a revenue of Rs 37,441 crore, down 2.3 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis, with a net profit of Rs 6,128 crore.

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