Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak is a British politician and investment banker based in London, England. He is currently serving as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Sunak was born May 12, 1980 in Southampton, England at Southampton General Hospital.¹⁾ His parents were born in the African countries of Tanzania and Kenya, their own parents having previously emigrated from India. The pair separately emigrated to England, where they met and married.²⁾ His father worked for the National Health Service (NHS), while his mother operated a pharmacy that later employed Sunak as a bookkeeper.

Sunak attended Winchester College, an elite private school that has produced a number of very powerful people over the years. He served as “head boy” while attending.³⁾ He then went to University of Oxford’s Lincoln College.

After graduating in 2001, Sunak was hired as an analyst by Goldman Sachs. He worked there until 2004, at which point he travelled to the United States to earn his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2006 as a Fulbright Scholar. Interestingly, it would seem at least some of his professors at Stanford don’t have any memory of him attending.⁴⁾

Completing his MBA at Stanford, Sunak returned to the United Kingdom to join the Children’s Investment (TCI) Fund Management as a partner.⁵⁾ He worked at TCI from September 2006 to November 2009.⁶⁾

Leaving TCI Fund Management in 2009, Sunak joined a new firm called Theleme Partners as a founding partner, which launched in October 2010. Theleme was co-founded by Patrick Degorce, who had also cofounded TCI.⁷⁾ Early investments under the new firm included News Corp and Community Health Systems.⁸⁾ In 2012, Degorce began investing in Moderna, adding it to Theleme's portfolio shortly after.⁹⁾ He had first met the staff at Moderna in 2011, the same year Stephane Bancel was hired as CEO at the biotechnology company.¹⁰⁾

Sunak was “one of the executives managing [Theleme Partners'] US office”, meaning he would have had direct oversight of the firm's interest in Moderna.¹¹⁾ By early 2020, Theleme Partners had “a quarter of its fund in Moderna,” making it “one of the company’s 10 largest shareholders” with “a roughly 20% position” as of October 2020.

Sunak stayed with Theleme Partners until 2013. He then returned to the United Kingdom and began as director of Catamaran Ventures UK, an investment firm he incorporated with his wife in June 2013 in partnership with his father-in-law's Indian company of the same name.^{12) 13)} Catamaran holds positions in Elon Musk's SpaceX and Reddit.¹⁴⁾

On October 24, 2022, Sunak became leader of the Conservative Party, elevating to Prime Minister the following day.¹⁵⁾

• Who is Rishi Sunak? by Liam Sturgess
• Wikipedia