New billionaire bosses at UK’s chemicals giant

PETROCHEMICALS giant Ineos has created two more billionaires after raking in record profits.

Director Andy Currie and finance chief John Reece are now both worth around £2.05bn due to their stakes in the company, the Sunday Times Rich List found.

They are closing in on boss Jim Ratcliffe ( picturedbelow) at the top end of the annual tally of the nation’s wealthiest, as Britain’s largest private company continues to grow rapidly.

Ratcliffe, who grew up in a council house in Manchester, has been propelled to number 18 in the Rich List. It found his personal worth had increased by £2.5bn to £5.75bn.

The trio’s ballooning wealth, revealed yesterday, highlights the rapid rise of the firm with ambitions to kick-start a fracking revolution in the UK.

It made £3.6bn last year, up from £3.4bn a year earlier, refining fuel and making chemicals that are used across the world in textiles, tyres, packaging, cosmetics, paints, electronics, toothpaste and more.

Ratcliffe, 64, who founded the company in 1998, said on announcing record prof- its last year: ‘ Ineos is a unique business. It has never floated. It’s a tribute to everyone involved – owners, management and staff – that it is doing so well.’ Ineos moved its headquarters back to London late last year after decamping to Geneva in 2010 following a row with the Labour government over a tax bill. Ratcliffe once said the UK ‘seems to have a little bit of a problem with profitability’.

The company now has a turnover of more than £30bn, having snapped up petrochemical assets from BP and ICI.

Ratcliffe is now taking a similar route in the North Sea, buying BP’s Forties Pipeline last month among other assets. He is determined to become the UK’s leading fracker, and has reportedly set aside millions to develop wells.

The Rich List said his lieuten- ants Currie, 61, and Reece, 60, both had a 20pc stake in Ineos, valued at £2.05bn.

Their wealth has increased by £ 1.4bn from £ 650m last year, according to the list. It ranks them in joint 57th place, up from 182nd place last year.

Cambridge-graduate Currie has been a director of the firm since 1999, having spent the first 15 years of his career with BP. Fellow Cambridge graduate Reece joined as finance director in 2000 from PricewaterhouseCoopers.