Sir Jim Ratcliffe: alchemist and adventurer
Sir Jim Ratliffe © Ineos
A Monegasque resident since 2018, Sir Jim Ratcliffe is the epitome of the self-made man, but with a British accent.
Starting from almost nothing, the boy from Manchester built a fortune that is as immense as it was meteoric – albeit late in his career – in petrochemicals, before undertaking a host of adventures and challenges in fields as diverse as vehicles, cycling, sailing… and football of course. At 72, the “alchemist” as he is nicknamed, continues to forge his discreet legend from the Principality.
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“The world’s biggest company you’ve never heard of”: in an era when some brands are on a par with the biggest stars of sport or film in terms of fame and appeal, the modesty and discretion with which Sir Jim Ratcliffe talks about his own company sets him apart.
The biggest company in the world that nobody has ever heard of, then, is Ineos. The sprawling petrochemicals empire is the source of the bulk of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s immense fortune, estimated by Forbes magazine at some 16.5 billion dollars – compared to around 23 billion at the end of 2022, as the entrepreneur’s wealth is partly indexed to Ineos’ share price.
The fact that neither his company nor his name are known to the general public is no doubt due to the fact that the 72-year-old’s fortune is relatively recent. The businessman didn’t officially became the UK’s number one fortune until 2018, when the value of Ineos, in which he holds a 60% stake, skyrocketed – exactly 20 years after he founded the petrochemicals group.
2018 was also the year in which Jim Ratcliffe chose to make Monaco his home,, continuing to run his business as well as his investments and sporting projects from there. On the sunny Riviera cost, overlooking the Mediterranean. It’s a far cry from the working class areas of Manchester where young Jim grew up.
From Manchester council estate to Monegasque villas, the meteoric rise of the “alchemist”
Born on 18 October 1952 in Failsworth, near Manchester, Jim had humble beginnings. His father was a joiner, his mother an office worker. His family lived on a council estate until he was ten. Like many young working-class Brits, Jim was passionate about football, preferring pitches and terraces to the classroom – and who could blame him, since he was right next door to Manchester United, one of the most legendary clubs in the English game?
“I just played football, really. That’s all I was interested in,” he told the Irish Sun many years later. His academic results suffered and, when he entered Birmingham University to study chemical engineering, he realised his A-level results were among the poorest of the intake.
On a summer internship with oil company BP, Ratcliffe was abruptly dismissed after three days because… of a mild case of eczema. He headed over to the competitor Esso, then, with an MBA from London Business School, on to the fabric and chemical company Courtaulds, before joining the American private equity group Advent International in 1989.
“The venture capital world is very simple,” he explains in The Sun: “If you do bad deals, you get fired. If you don’t do any deals, you get fired. I took that job because (…) I always had the feeling that a very good opportunity would come along.” An innate business sense that was to guide him on the road to success and fortune.
In 1998, Ratcliffe left the job at Advent and went solo, buying his first chemicals plant in Antwerp. Ineos was born. Along with partners Andy Currie and John Reece, the entrepreneur developed a winning formula, buying underperforming or unwanted assets from certain companies – such as BP, the group that had fired him a few decades earlier: “We’d look at businesses that were unfashionable or unsexy, facilities owned by large corporations. We’d run them a bit better, make them busy and very profitable,” says Sir Jim.
A formula and an industrial vision which, in the space of two decades, would take Ineos to the top of the global petrochemicals sphere.
Ineos currently employs over 26,000 people at nearly 200 sites in some thirty countries. Every year, the company produces 60 million tonnes of chemicals, which are used to make an infinite range of products, from toothpaste and food packaging to medicines, insulation and drinking water.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has built a veritable empire, taking risks all the way, taking on huge debts and even coming close to bankruptcy in 2008. Then, less than ten years later, he bounced back, generating nearly €2 billion in annual profits and tripling his personal wealth between 2017 and 2018. An incredible success story, celebrated by a book that was released for the 25th anniversary of the Ineos group ; and that earned him a nickname: “the alchemist”, the man who turns unprofitable assets into gold.
Gas, sport, automobiles, innovation: an expanding Ineos galaxy
Sir Jim Ratcliffe is perhaps an alchemist, but above all he is a jack-of-all-trades. The serial entrepreneur refuses to be tied down to the petrochemicals sector alone, an industry that generates both profits… and pollution.
Aware of the environmental impact of his businesses, the captain of industry unveiled an ambitious carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in March 2023. Called Greensand, the aim of the Ineos initiative is to extract CO2 in Belgium and store it safely and indefinitely in a former oil field 1,800 metres below the seabed.
Ratcliffe believes that “the task at hand for the industry and policymakers is now to support the continued development and deployment of CCS as an essential tool to mitigate climate change.”
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has projects aplenty. In 2017, the businessman set about building a line of ultra-robust 4×4s that could go anywhere. The stated ambition of the Ineos Grenadier (named after a London pub the billionnaire likes to frequent) is quite simply to supersede the iconic Land Rover Defender, whose rights the British firm had previously refused to sell to Ratcliffe.
Starting from a blank drawing board, the vehicle had its robustness tested on the steep, rugged terrain of Kosovo, then across the rivers and hills of Scotland. The gamble appears to have paid off handsomely, judging by the tens of thousands of pre-orders. The vehicle is built in France, with prices from €60,000 and was tested – and approved! – in 2022 by none other than seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton.
Ineos Grenadiers is also the name of the cycling team Sir Jim acquired in 2010. This is the former Sky team, one of the best in the peloton, which in August recruited Monaco’s Victor Langellotti and opened a cycling academy in Kenya to nurture the talents of tomorrow.
Although Ineos also sponsors the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team and driver Lewis Hamilton, nothing seems to be able to compare to the billionaire’s love of football; Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s true passion was, is, and always will be football.
It’s an all-consuming passion that goes back to his childhood. It led him to take control of OGC Nice in 2019, with the help of his recently-acquired wealth. Boom! The €100 million shelled out by the Brit didn’t work miracles, as the club’s results are nothing to write home about: “We made some stupid mistakes at Nice,” Sir Jim admitted last February.
Still, the businessman has lofty ambitions for Nice, not least of which is to turn the Aiglons into a veritable “conduit to Manchester United later on.”
Manchester United, a childhood dream come true
Not content with taking over Nice after FC Lausanne in 1998, Jim Ratcliffe realised a childhood dream almost a year ago. The ultimate dream for the local lad: to become the big boss at the iconic Manchester club.
“I have done a few exciting things, but this caps it all,” admitted the club’s new boss. His colossal investment did not prevent the Red Devils from suffering their worst start to a season since 1930.
Not enough to rattle Ratcliffe, as he is well aware that “in life, there are ups and downs. There can’t only be highs, and you appreciate them all the more if you’ve dealt with a few lows before.”
Despite the disappointing results, Ratcliffe said in an open letter to the club’s supporters that he believed “that we can deliver sporting success on the pitch. There are no guarantees in sport, and change can inevitably take time, but we are in it for the long term. (…) I take that responsibility very seriously.”
While rueing the fact that when he arrived he found “more accountants than sporting people,” the club’s ruthless new boss has helped the club return to financial health, including through major cuts in the payroll. He makes no secret of his ambition: “We all want to see Manchester United back where we belong, at the very top of English, European and world football.”
He is clearly not a man who shies away from a challenge. Like the most prestigious of sailing competitions, the legendary America’s Cup, where Ineos Britannia team competed in last year’s final.
Although Ratcliffe’s crew members lost out to their Emirati rivals at the end of October, they had previously excelled against strong opponents, such as the Italian team, which was beaten in the Louis Vuitton Cup (the America’s Cup semi-final) in Barcelona at the end of the summer. “We’ve made history,” he said at the end of the adventure, claiming the Ineos yacht’s performance “shows the new standard for British sailing that this team has set.”
A last adventure for the “alchemist” in Monaco?
Jim Ratcliffe continues to manage his empire and plan his future adventures on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Monaco, where he moved towards the end of the last decade.
In the space of just a few years, the ‘alchemist’ has become a key figure in Monegasque life, readily appearing alongside the Princely Family: here and there at charity galas in Courchevel, co-chaired by Sir Jim himself and Prince Albert II; or in July at the 75th Red Cross Gala. But always keeping an eye on the country he grew up, England, to which he swears he has “tried to give back” what it gave him.