LONDON - Here are five facts about Britain's new finance minister Nadhim Zahawi, appointed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday following the resignation of Rishi Sunak.
- Zahawi, 55, was born in Iraq and moved to Britain in the mid-1970s when his Kurdish family fled the rule of Saddam Hussein.
- A long-standing member of the Conservative Party, Zahawi worked in the 1990s as an aide for novelist and politician Jeffrey Archer, who was jailed for perjury in 2001.
- In 2000 he co-founded the polling company YouGov and was its chief executive until 2010, turning the company into one of Britain's top market research companies.
- Zahawi ran in the 2010 general election as the Conservative Party candidate for Stratford-upon-Avon and won. His success in business prompted then prime minister David Cameron to appoint Zahawi to the policy unit in Downing Street.
- After working in junior ministerial roles in the education and business departments, he was appointed minister in charge of the COVID-19 vaccine rollouts in 2020. In 2021, Boris Johnson appointed him to the cabinet as education secretary.
(This story corrects to show Zahawi moved to Britain in the 1970s, not 1990s)