Brexit fan who says: I’m not PC enough to be a Sir
ONE of the most flamboyant ‘toys’ in Jim Ratcliffe’s empire is his superyacht which has a wine cellar, tennis court, football pitch and helipad. It’s called Hampshire II. Why? Because he has a (smaller) boat also called Hampshire, as well as a country estate – in Hampshire, obviously – among countless other possessions befitting a billionaire named yesterday as Britain’s richest man.
Ratcliffe is the first British-born industrialist to top the Sunday Times Rich List, with a fortune of £21billion. But there is at least one thing setting the 65-year-old apart – his truly humble upbringing.
He spent his earliest years in a council house on Dunkerley Avenue in Failsworth, a small town between Manchester and Oldham, where even today you can buy a terrace or semi for next to nothing. His father was a joiner, his mother had an office job working in accounts.
The family would later move to Yorkshire where he attended Beverley Grammar School. ‘I just played football really,’ he says wryly when asked about his schooldays. ‘That’s all I was interested in.’
You will not be surprised to learn Ratcliffe owns a football club, not in the Premier League, admittedly, but FC Lausanne in Switzerland (one recent signing was Enzo Zidane, son of French World Cup-winning legend Zinedine).
Jim Ratcliffe has taken just 20 years to achieve all this – but his career almost ended before it began.
He obtained a 2:1 in chemical engineering from Birmingham University and, after working for BP in over summer, was offered a permanent job, only to be sacked within three days. ‘I was called in by my boss,’ he recalled, ‘who said he that he had been reading my medical report – they’d not bothered until then – I was fired for having mild eczema.
‘“You can’t work here, not with eczema,” I was told. “We can’t spend the money on training you for five years and then find you’ve got an allergy, so you’re on your bike.”’
Ratcliffe eventually got a job with Courtaulds, the Coventry-based fabric and chemical manufacturer where he stayed into his mid-30s before moving into venture capital.
It was only in 1998 that he founded chemicals firm Ineos, which has an annual turnover of £45billion and employs more than 18,500 people at 181 sites across 22 countries. Its products are used to clean water, make toothpaste, manufacture antibiotics, insulate homes and package food.
HIS meteoric success is a source of irritation for some. Like vacuum cleaner tycoon James Dyson, Ratcliffe is a prominent backer of Brexit.
He was once asked why he had never received a knighthood. ‘I’m not PC enough,’ declared the billionaire.
‘The Brits are perfectly capable of managing the Brits and don’t need Brussels telling them how to manage things,’ he said in recent interview. ‘I just don’t believe in the concept of a United States of Europe. It’s not viable.’
Europe aside, Ratcliffe is one the most passionate voices in favour of fracking, the extraction of shale gas from underground that has dismayed green groups – and many in middle England. Ineos is trying to frack in Scotland and South Yorkshire. Standing well over 6ft, he is known as ‘Big Jim’ in the City. He once conducted an interview while jabbing at a punch bag in the swanky gym at Ineos’s Knightsbridge HQ.
And no one could accuse the sports enthusiast of pulling punches away from the gym.
Only this week he told the British Olympic Association to ‘take a long walk off a short plank’ after it refused to let him use its Team GB trademark for the America’s Cup.
He had struck a £110million deal to underwrite Sir Ben Ainslie’s crew for the 2021 yachting race, rebranding them ‘Ineos Team GB’, but the BOA refused the rights without a £6.6million contribution to fund Olympians.
He was also involved in a bruising confrontation with unions at the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland a few years ago over a ‘survival plan’ that included a pay freeze. He was dubbed Doctor No, after the Bond villain, because of his tough negotiating stance.
It was a battle Ratcliffe eventually won. ‘A victory for common sense,’ he called it.
His bid to build a mansion in Hampshire also caused controversy. Ratcliffe gained permission for his plans only at the fifth attempt last year as
conservationists branded him a ‘debilitating nuisance’. Ratcliffe recently completed an Ironman triathlon, in which competitors swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles and run a marathon. Big Jim finished in an impressive 14 hours and 44 minutes.
And nothing gets in the way of his daily lunchtime run, to the extent that he’ll curtail meetings to jog; executives around the boardroom table are often invited to join him.
He celebrated his 60th birthday with three arduous tests – running an ultramarathon in South Africa (a 56mile uphill slog), learning to kitesurf and a motorbike ride through Africa with his two sons from his first marriage to Amanda Townson. They married in 1986, divorcing in 1995.
While riding his motorbike in South Africa, Ratcliffe, who has a daughter with second wife Alicia, broke three bones in his foot. Ignoring advice to pull out, he arranged to be sent a skiboot for his injured foot.
‘I can’t think of anything I set out to do and have not completed,’ he said afterwards. An associate added: ‘He’s an extraordinary character under pressure, I think he relishes a bit of personal discomfort sometimes.’
But it is on Europe where Ratcliffe has proved most resilient. ‘Brexit is a reality and we must prepare for complex and tough negotiations with our European friends,’ he said. ‘We must listen, we must be unwaveringly polite and retain our charm. But there is no room for weakness or crumpling at 3am when the going gets tough.’