Catamaran Ventures UK, an investment firm founded by Akshata Murty, wife of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, will shut down, according to company filings.
The VC firm’s most recent filing on Companies House shows that the directors have decided to “liquidate the company”. The wind down was first reported by The Times.
The company was co-founded in 2013 by Sunak and Murty as the British arm of her father’s India-based VC Catamaran Ventures. Sunak stepped down as director in April 2015, shortly before he was elected as an MP.
The most recent balance sheet for Catamaran Ventures UK put the value of its investments in 2022 at £3.8m, an increase from the £3.5m from 2021.
The filings also revealed that its cash holdings fell from just below £400,000 in 2021 to £21,890 in 2022.
Catamaran Ventures UK has been criticised in the past due to its portfolio firms receiving tax-funded grants.
Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer this year called out Sunak and Murty after Study Hall, an edtech startup backed by Catamaran, received close to £350,000 from Innovate UK, a publicly funding body.
Starmer said in May that there are “questions to answer in relation to this” and that there appeared to be an “emerging pattern of behaviour here”.
The now-collapsed education startup Mrs Wordsmith, also backed by Catamaran, received £650,000 in funding from the Future Fund, a government scheme launched during Sunak’s time as chancellor.
UKTN has contacted Catamaran Ventures and Downing Street for comment.