Ineos owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been linked with a bid to buy Manchester United following the Glazers' decision to put the club up for sale. The billionaire made a late bid to buy Chelsea earlier this year.
Ratcliffe made a £4billion offer to buy Chelsea before Todd Boehly eventually became the new owner of the club, taking over from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in west London.
Now, Manchester United owners the Glazer family have effectively put the club up for sale, releasing a statement which reads: "Manchester United plc (NYSE:MANU), one of the most successful and historic sports clubs in the world, announces today that the Company’s Board of Directors (the “Board”) is commencing a process to explore strategic alternatives for the club.
READ MORE: The Glazers make major Man United decision that will impact Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham
"The process is designed to enhance the club's future growth, with the ultimate goal of positioning the club to capitalize on opportunities both on the pitch and commercially.
"As part of this process, the Board will consider all strategic alternatives, including new investment into the club, a sale, or other transactions involving the Company."
Now, football.london takes a closer look at who exactly Ratcliffe is and what he has said regarding a potential takeover.
Who is Sir Jim Ratcliffe?
Ratcliffe is a 70-year-old British billionaire. He is the chairman and CEO of Ineos chemicals group, a company he founded in 1998, with their estimated turnover in 2021 thought to be €18.8billion (£16.3billion).
He ranked 25th on The Times 2021 rich list, with an estimated worth of £6.33billion - falling £5.82billion from the previous year when he ranked fifth. Ratcliffe currently owns Ligue 1 side OGC Nice, completing a €100million (£86.9million) million takeover of the French outfit in August 2019.
What happened with Chelsea takeover
"We put an offer in this morning," Ratcliffe told The Times at the time. "We are the only British bid. Our motives are simply to try and create a very fine club in London. We have no profit motive because we make our money in other ways."
That came just a month after he explained why he opted to not buy the Blues from Abramovich back in 2019. "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."
Speaking about the Premier League giants to The Times back in 2019, he said: "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."
Man United links
Ratcliffe is a Manchester United fan, and said back in October that he was interested in buying the club - but was rebuffed by the owners.
"Manchester United is owned by the Glazer family, whom I have met," Ratcliffe said at a Financial Times event. "I've met Joel and Avram and they are the nicest people, I have to say, they are proper gentlemen.
"They don't want to sell it. It's owned by the six children of the father and they don't want to sell it.
"If it had been for sale in the summer then, yes, we would have probably had a go following on from the Chelsea thing, but we can't sit around hoping that one day Manchester United will become available.
"We have an exciting sporting franchise [Ligue 1 side Nice], but the one thing we don't have is a Premier [League] team.
"The most popular sport in the world is football and it is the sport we were brought up with and it's the one most close to us. We really should have an asset in the sporting franchise."
However, the billionaire has distanced himself from bids for clubs amid Liverpool recently going up for sale as well.
"Our position has developed since the summer and we are now focusing our efforts in Nice and raising our ambitions for the club to make them into a top-tier club in France to compete with PSG," a spokesman told the Telegraph.
“This would represent much better value for our investment than buying one of the top-tier Premier League clubs."
Whether United going up for sale would be enough to tempt the billionaire back into a bid for a Premier League club remains to be seen.
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