GREG Hands, MP for Chelsea and Fulham, will take over the role as Conservative Party chairman as Rishi Sunak begins the first reshuffle of his Cabinet.
His appointment comes just over a week after former chair Nadhim Zahawi was sacked over the handling of his tax affairs.
He has remained a minister for the majority of the past eight years after first serving in David Cameron's cabinet.
Where does he come from?
Hands was born in New York City to parents from the UK and lived there until he was seven years old. They returned to the UK and he completed his schooling in Amersham.
He studied Modern History at Cambridge, where he then joined the Conservative party and also served as the chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association. He later worked for eight years on trading floors in London and New York.
He now lives in Fulham with his German wife Irina, and their son and daughter.
Gateway to the Front Bench
A polyglot who speaks five European languages, Hands was elected a councillor in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, where he became leader of the Conservative Group in 1999.
Hands was elected as an MP in 2005, first in Hammersmith and Fulham, then in Chelsea and Fulham since its creation in 2010.
Two years later, Hands took up a seat as a shadow Treasury minister.
Climbing the ladder to Cabinet
In the past decade, he served as private secretary to George Osbourne, deputy chief whip, a junior minister in the Department for International Trade then, minister for London, trade policy minister, and then business, energy and clean growth minister.
Conservative Home reports that he has built up a reputation as being a formidable local campaigner, knowing local people's names and issues they stand for.
What issues does he stand for?
Hands was a staunch Remainer and was demoted by Theresa May to a junior minister.
He later resigned from Cabinet in 2018 over his opposition to Heathrow's third runway, which as a loyalist MP took his own department by surprise, but Boris Johnson returned him to Cabinet before promoting him.
In the short-lived Liz Truss government he was made trade policy minister again and days before she stepped down.
