Factbox-Five facts about Britain's new finance minister Nadhim Zahawi

LONDON (Reuters) - 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-1990s 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.

(Reporting by Andy Bruce, editing by Deepa Babington)