Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is rejoining Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as a senior adviser, two decades after he left the Wall Street bank as an analyst and a year after leaving Downing Street.
Sunak, who served as prime minister from October 2022 to July 2024, will work with leaders across New York-based Goldman to advise clients globally on a range of topics, “sharing his unique perspectives and insights on the macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape,” CEO David Solomon said in a statement Tuesday.
The former prime minister led the Conservative Party to its worst-ever defeat in last year’s general election, but still serves as a Member of Parliament for the constituency of Richmond and Northallerton in northern England.
During the election campaign, he vowed to remain an MP for the full duration of the next Parliament, regardless of the outcome of the vote. His successor, Labour’s Keir Starmer, can call the next general election as late as mid-2029.
Sunak, 45, worked at Goldman first as a summer intern in investment banking, in 2000, and then as an analyst, from 2001 to 2004. He subsequently broke into the hedge fund industry by joining billionaire Chris Hohn’s The Children’s Investment Fund.
He spent his late twenties at TCI working as an analyst before leaving in 2009 for Theleme Partners and then left the industry to launch his political career, becoming an MP in 2015.
Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, who serves as a trustee of her alma mater, Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, are the richest people to have occupied 10 Downing Street.
Murty has a fortune of more than $700 million thanks largely to her stake in Infosys Ltd., the software giant founded by her father, according to an estimate by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Sunak is required to seek advice from the UK’s independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments when taking up outside appointments to ensure there is no conflict of interest relating to decisions he may have made while in office.
Acoba can recommend a delay in taking up appointments and, in exceptional cases, it can advise against taking up a post. But its role is advisory and it has no powers to enforce its advice.
‘Reasonable Concern’
In a letter Tuesday, Acoba put specific conditions on Sunak’s role. For at least two years from his last day in office, he’s barred from lobbying the UK government on behalf of Goldman and can’t advise “on matters specific to investment by a foreign government and its sovereign wealth funds,” according to the letter.
“As the former Prime Minister, there is a reasonable concern that your appointment could be seen to offer unfair access and influence within the UK government,” Acoba wrote.
As a sitting MP, Sunak will also, within 28 days, have to declare any earnings he makes from Goldman with Parliament’s Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Goldman’s numerous ties to government figures have earned the bank the nickname “Government Sachs.” The company features on the resumes of such figures as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and former US Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Steve Mnuchin.
Sunak’s hire is also the latest in a spate of hires by Wall Street firms of former politicians, largely in the U.S., as they look to offer geopolitical advice to clients. Citigroup Inc. hired President Donald Trump’s former trade representative Robert Lighthizer, while Reince Priebus, Trump’s former chief of staff, recently joined investment bank Centerview Partners.
Before his time as prime minister, Sunak was chancellor of the exchequer from February 2020 to July 2022, and previously served as chief secretary to the Treasury and parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
(Credit: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)
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