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Sir Jim, founder and boss of chemical giant Ineos, is a football obsessive who recently attracted controversy by his decision to abandon Britain for the tax haven of Monaco.
Newspaper articles suggested the billionaire was considering putting in an offer for the club, although his spokesman later said there was ‘no substance’ to the reports.
Sir Jim, who bought French club Nice for £91m in 2019, has previously been linked to both Chelsea and Manchester United, but has never gone ahead with buying a Premier League club because he considers them too expensive.
In 2019, the 69-year-old identified Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium as a major issue for any potential owner.
‘There was some early exchange but we were a significant way apart on valuations,’ Ratcliffe told BBC Five Live. ‘The issue with Chelsea is its stadium. We are all getting older and it is a decade of your life to resolve that.’
And he explained to The Times in 2019: ‘Even though clubs have those valuations today, nobody has ever paid those amounts of money.
‘How much did Abramovich pay for Chelsea, £100 million? The Glazers, what £500 million? You can say it’s worth three, four billion but no one has ever paid those sums.
‘Ineos has always tried to take a sensible approach. We don’t like squandering money or we wouldn’t be where we are today. It’s part of our DNA, trying to spend sensibly.’
Born in 1952, Sir Jim grew up in a council house on Dunkerley Avenue in Failsworth, a small town between Manchester and Oldham, before attending Beverley Grammar School when his family moved to Yorkshire.
On his first day at the University of Birmingham, he was embarrassed to see he was nearly at the bottom of a list of 99 undergraduates ranked by their A-level results, but went on to achieve a 2:1 in chemical engineering.
He worked for BP during a summer holiday after graduating and was offered a job. But he was fired after just three days because his boss had seen his medical report and wasn’t keen on him working there with mild eczema.
Sir Jim went on to work as a trainee accountant at a pharmaceuticals company before moving to Esso then Courtaulds. In 1992 he mortgaged his house to buy BP’s chemicals division for about £40 million.
He only started his first business weeks before his 40th birthday and founded Ineos aged 45 in 1998. During the next 20 years he transformed it into the world’s fourth largest chemicals company, with annual revenues of £45bn.
Sir Jim is a lifelong Manchester United fan, although he also has a season ticket at Chelsea. He sponsors professional cycling team the Ineos Grenadiers, who under their previous name, Team Sky, won the Tour de France seven times.
In 2020, he was slammed for following a raft of rich Britons including Topshop boss Phillip Green and his wife Tina in relocating from the UK to Monaco where he is expected to save an estimated £4billion in tax.
People who live in Monaco for at least 183 days a year do not pay any income or property taxes. In the UK, meanwhile, the highest tax rate is 45% on income above £150,000-a-year.
Sir Jim was the UK’s third highest individual taxpayer and forked out £110million in 2017-18, according to the Sunday Times tax list.
The move came soon after he was knighted by the Queen for ‘services to business and investment’.
The businessman also came under fire when it emerged he had furloughed almost 800 members of staff from his luxury hotel groups. His net worth has been reported as between £12 and £14bn.
Sir Jim married his first wife Amanda Townson in 1985. The pair, who have two sons, divorced in 1995. He has a daughter with his second wife Alicia. Cutting a svelte figure, he does distance running and triathlons to keep himself in shape.