Zia Yusuf

Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf^[3] was born in Bellshill, North Lanarkshire, Scotland.^[4][1] His parents migrated from Sri Lanka to the UK in the 1980s, and both worked for the NHS.^[5] His father is a doctor and his mother is a nurse.^[6]

Yusuf was educated at the fee-charging Hampton School in west London, where he won a 50% scholarship and met his future business partner, Alex Macdonald.^[7][8] Yusuf earned a BSc in international relations from the London School of Economics in 2009.^[9][10]

Yusuf worked at Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs after leaving university, specialising in European automotive and defence companies.^[11]

His job involved understanding how giant manufacturers like Fiat, Peugeot, Siemens, Weir Group, Spirex-Sarco Engineering, Saffron and Airbus worked. He rose to executive director^[7] at Goldman Sachs.

In 2014, Yusuf and Macdonald founded a luxury concierge company, Velocity Black, of which he was the CEO.^[12][7] In 2023, they sold the company to Capital One for £233 million, and Yusuf made an estimated £31 million.^[13][5][4]

Yusuf first met Nigel Farage at a cocktail party hosted by the Eurosceptic millionaire Stuart Wheeler.^[14] After selling his business in 2023, he subsequently turned to politics and became the largest donor to Reform UK in the run-up to the 2024 general election.^[12][15] Nigel Farage has suggested that Yusuf might one day lead Reform UK.^[5]

In June 2024, Yusuf spoke at a Reform UK rally, at the NEC in Birmingham. On 11 July 2024, he succeeded Richard Tice as Chairman of Reform UK.^[12] Despite a major donation to Reform UK in June 2024 and his appointment as party chair in July, Yusuf was a paid-up member of the Conservative Party, until August 2024. Yusuf did not leave the Conservative Party of his own accord, but rather had his membership revoked by the party after it had been publicly disclosed by The Guardian.^[16]

On 7 March 2025, it was reported that Reform MP Rupert Lowe was suspended from the party due to alleged physical threats of violence against Yusuf on "at least two occasions". Lowe said the allegations were "untrue and false".^[17]

Furthermore, Rupert Lowe alleges that Yusuf may have forced him out of the party for "talking too much about 'mass deportations'".^[18] This comes after Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, called mass deportations of illegal immigrants a "political impossibility",^[19] distancing the party from advocating for deportations.

Yusuf describes himself as a "British Muslim patriot".^[13][4]