This is what I don’t get.
Having immigrant parents that came over with very little, grafted hard and made a few quid so their kids could be brought up in comfort should be something to be massively proud of in my book.
He should be owning that and saying look where hard work gets you etc.
He’s a total oddball.
Let's not forget how he made his millions (apart from marrying a billionaire's daughter).
Not necessarily by working hard, more by exploiting the poor.
He went to Winchester College, fees running currently at close to £50k per year (soon to be +VAT), and then studying PPE at Oxford, the degree course of future politicians.
GP Dad and Pharma Mum must have scrimped and saved for that. It's no wonder he doesn't want to pay doctors more when he saw how his parents invested their money wisely when he was a boy, rather than blowing it on SKY TV.
MBA at Stanford where he met the missus.
He went to "work" as a partner in The Children's Investment Fund Management, a nice name for a multi-billion hedge fund ultimately owned in the Cayman Islands, I wonder why.
I can imagine the interview - "So Rishi, what does your wife do?" "Her dad owns Infosys and he's worth squillions, do you think you could help him invest his wealth and maybe that of his mates?" "You're hired"
They bought a 1% stake in the Dutch bank ABN Amro and then pressured ABN into ultimately selling for $100bn to Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander.
The banks bought a load of sub-prime debt issued to people who had a low chance of ever being repaid, like 100% mortgage, poor employment security people.
This brought down the banks and triggered the 2008 financial crash requiring billions of government money to stop the banking world collapsing. That's taxpayer money, your money, my money.
Rishi personally benefitted from forcing a banking collapse.
Doesn't get talked about enough.
That's just one example that hit most of us all directly.
Other cases of making millions from killing other companies are not so widespread. Impacting not all of us, just the people who suffered by losing their livelihoods because a hedge fund wanted to make a few more millions a la Gordon Gecko.
As a couple they reputedly have wealth of £650mn from owning 1% of Infosys, his missus now generously forgoing her non-dom zero-tax status as an Indian citizen.
And despite having huge wealth, he declared income of £2.2m (he'd get better returns from saving at the building society) and paying £400-500k tax. What a guy.
We need an overhaul of the tax system, fortunately it won't be done by Dishi Rishi.
