Friday, October 20, 2023
Nothing to see here - honest Guv
The Guardian reports that Rishi Sunak’s controversial fund to support startups during the Covid pandemic invested nearly £2m in companies linked to his wife.
The paper says that Carousel Ventures, a company part-owned by Akshata Murty’s venture capital firm, got an investment of £250,000 from the Future Fund to help fund its ownership of a luxury underwear business called Heist Studios:
It is the fourth business linked to Murty revealed to have received an investment from the fund set up by Sunak to support startups when he was chancellor during the Covid pandemic.
None of Murty’s investments that benefited from the Future Fund appear publicly on Sunak’s register of ministerial interests. Critics have raised concerns over a lack of transparency and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest given Sunak launched the scheme to help startups – a sector in which his wife is a known investor.
Other investors in Carousel Ventures via an intermediary fund include Andrew Griffith, a Conservative MP who is now a Treasury minister under Sunak, and Brent Hoberman, a businessman who publicly pleaded with Sunak to bring in such a scheme and “save our startups”.
The £250,000 loan to Carousel Ventures has now been converted into equity, so the UK taxpayer owns a small stake in the “revolutionary shapewear” company.
As well as Carousel Ventures, Murty also had shareholdings in New Craftsmen, which received a £250,000 Future Fund loan; Mrs Wordsmith, which got £1.3m from the fund; and Digme Fitness, which received an unknown amount over £125,000, according to the terms of the fund. All three businesses went into administration.
Part of the problem here is the lack of transparency:
The Guardian has identified 17 shareholdings that have been held by Murty or her venture capital company Catamaran Ventures UK at various points during Sunak’s time as chancellor or prime minister, none of which he voluntarily disclosed. Koru Kids is still the only one to have been declared.
Those not previously in the public domain include a health and beauty range based on Chinese medicine called Elemental Herbology; a luxury jeweller, Fentons; a fashion website, LuxFix; and a now defunct gym business called Resonant Frequency.
Catamaran Ventures UK is funded by Murty personally through a £4m interest-free loan. It recently announced that it was being wound down.
She has rarely talked about her business interests in public but in 2017 Murty is understood to have given a presentation to delegates at a trade department event, presenting her shareholdings as part of her billionaire father Narayana Murthy’s overarching business empire.
The slide presentation, seen by the Guardian, described Catamaran as a “family office (private capital) founded by Indian tech entrepreneur NR Narayana Murthy with locations in Bangalore and London”, suggesting the London office was an offshoot of the overall Murty empire.
It said there was a “strong focus in India on private investments … education, technology, healthcare, consumer key sectors” while the “focus in London [is] on the consumer sector – brands in their growth phase”.
It listed London-based brands Digme Fitness, Bing! of Acamar Studios and Bloom and Wild in a graphic under the same umbrella as her father’s firm’s investments in Paperboat, Amazon India, Infosys and Yebhi.
None of Sunak’s father-in-law’s business interests or his wife’s £600m-plus stake in Infosys, a major Indian IT company, appear on the prime minister’s public register of ministerial interests
Surely, it is time for a change in the rules around ministerial interests.
The paper says that Carousel Ventures, a company part-owned by Akshata Murty’s venture capital firm, got an investment of £250,000 from the Future Fund to help fund its ownership of a luxury underwear business called Heist Studios:
It is the fourth business linked to Murty revealed to have received an investment from the fund set up by Sunak to support startups when he was chancellor during the Covid pandemic.
None of Murty’s investments that benefited from the Future Fund appear publicly on Sunak’s register of ministerial interests. Critics have raised concerns over a lack of transparency and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest given Sunak launched the scheme to help startups – a sector in which his wife is a known investor.
Other investors in Carousel Ventures via an intermediary fund include Andrew Griffith, a Conservative MP who is now a Treasury minister under Sunak, and Brent Hoberman, a businessman who publicly pleaded with Sunak to bring in such a scheme and “save our startups”.
The £250,000 loan to Carousel Ventures has now been converted into equity, so the UK taxpayer owns a small stake in the “revolutionary shapewear” company.
As well as Carousel Ventures, Murty also had shareholdings in New Craftsmen, which received a £250,000 Future Fund loan; Mrs Wordsmith, which got £1.3m from the fund; and Digme Fitness, which received an unknown amount over £125,000, according to the terms of the fund. All three businesses went into administration.
Part of the problem here is the lack of transparency:
The Guardian has identified 17 shareholdings that have been held by Murty or her venture capital company Catamaran Ventures UK at various points during Sunak’s time as chancellor or prime minister, none of which he voluntarily disclosed. Koru Kids is still the only one to have been declared.
Those not previously in the public domain include a health and beauty range based on Chinese medicine called Elemental Herbology; a luxury jeweller, Fentons; a fashion website, LuxFix; and a now defunct gym business called Resonant Frequency.
Catamaran Ventures UK is funded by Murty personally through a £4m interest-free loan. It recently announced that it was being wound down.
She has rarely talked about her business interests in public but in 2017 Murty is understood to have given a presentation to delegates at a trade department event, presenting her shareholdings as part of her billionaire father Narayana Murthy’s overarching business empire.
The slide presentation, seen by the Guardian, described Catamaran as a “family office (private capital) founded by Indian tech entrepreneur NR Narayana Murthy with locations in Bangalore and London”, suggesting the London office was an offshoot of the overall Murty empire.
It said there was a “strong focus in India on private investments … education, technology, healthcare, consumer key sectors” while the “focus in London [is] on the consumer sector – brands in their growth phase”.
It listed London-based brands Digme Fitness, Bing! of Acamar Studios and Bloom and Wild in a graphic under the same umbrella as her father’s firm’s investments in Paperboat, Amazon India, Infosys and Yebhi.
None of Sunak’s father-in-law’s business interests or his wife’s £600m-plus stake in Infosys, a major Indian IT company, appear on the prime minister’s public register of ministerial interests
Surely, it is time for a change in the rules around ministerial interests.
