Lifelong Man United fan Sir Jim Ratcliffe could buy club from the Glazers after failed Chelsea bid

Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has emerged as a contender to takeover Manchester United after the Glazer family announced they are ready to sell the club.

The 69-year-old, who founded chemical giant Ineos, revealed his interest in launching a bid to buy the club earlier this year and is understood to be in the frame after its current owners sensationally announced they will listen to offers.

In a statement issued at 9.30pm last night, co-chairmen Avram and Joel Glazer said they had authorised ‘a thorough evaluation of strategic alternatives’.

It is thought that an offer in excess of £5bn – and possibly as high as £9bn – would persuade them to sell up.

Ratcliffe, meanwhile, said he wanted to buy Manchester United in August following a failed £4.25billion bid to purchase Chelsea.

The tycoon, who has an estimated net worth of £10.9billion, already has experience at the helm of a top football club with Team Ineos completing their €100million (£85million) takeover of Ligue 1 club OGC Nice in 2019.

That came two years after purchasing Swiss team FC Lausanne-Sport.

The INEOS Sport brand is led by Ratcliffe, with co-owners Andy Currie and John Reece, and also owns a third of the Mercedes Formula One team.

Ratcliffe is a lifelong Manchester United fan, though has admitted to having a season ticket at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge.

He previously revealed that his favourite moment as a United fan was being there when they made their late comeback to win the Champions League in 1999. 

The businessman was born in 1952 and grew up in a council house on Dunkerley Avenue in Failsworth, a small town between Manchester and Oldham.

When his family moved to Yorkshire, the billionaire went to Beverley Grammar School before attending the University of Birmingham.

On his first day at the university, Ratcliffe was embarrassed to see he was towards the bottom of a list of 99 students ranked by their A-level results, but went on to achieve a 2:1 in chemical engineering. 

Following his graduation, he worked for BP during a summer holiday and was offered a job, but was fired just three days later because his boss came across his medical report and was not keen on him working there with mild eczema.

Ratcliffe then became a trainee accountant at a pharmaceuticals company, before moving onto Esso and then Courtaulds. 

In 1992, he mortgaged his house to buy BP’s chemicals division for around £40 million.

He started his first business shortly before his 40th birthday before founding Ineos aged 45 in 1998.

Over the following two decades, Ratcliffe has transformed the company into the world’s fourth largest chemicals company – operating 194 sites across 29 countries with 26,000 employees and annual revenues of £45bn.

Aside from his interests in football, he sponsors professional cycling team the Ineos Grenadiers, previously named Team Sky, who have won the Tour de France seven times.

Sir Jim married his first wife Amanda Townson in 1985 and they had two sons, George and Samuel, but the couple 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. 

Ratcliffe was the UK’s third highest individual taxpayer and forked out £110million in 2017-18, according to the Sunday Times tax list. 

But 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.

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.

Earlier this year Ratcliffe tried to purchase Chelsea, but saw his late bid turned down as current owner Todd Boehly and his consortium took ownership of the London club.

However, he has been outspoken in his view that Manchester United has lost its way, previously criticising the club in 2019 for its ‘shockingly poor’ managerial selections and spending ‘dumb money’ on ‘players like Fred’.

The current ownership model at the club sees the majority of control lie with the Glazer family, with Avram and Joel the main representatives.

The family purchased in the club in 2005, but have repeatedly been hit with swathes of criticism from the outset over the leveraged £790million purchase which heaped huge debt on United. 

A statement from the Glazers last night read: ‘The strength of Manchester United rests on the passion and loyalty of our global community of 1.1bn fans and followers.

‘As we seek to continue building on the club’s history of success, the board has authorised a thorough evaluation of strategic alternatives.

‘We will evaluate all options to ensure that we best serve our fans and that Manchester United maximizes the significant growth opportunities available to the club today and in the future.’

The Glazers enjoyed early success at Old Trafford with Sir Alex Ferguson as manager, but United have failed to win the title in almost a decade since Ferguson and chief executive David Gill retired in 2013. 

Although the owners have spent well over £1bn on new signings in that time – and a club record £220m in the summer transfer window – they have failed to win over fans who continue to protest regularly inside and outside Old Trafford. 

After Ratcliffe’s failed bid for Chelsea in May, a spokesman confirmed: ‘If the club (United) is for sale, Jim is definitely a potential buyer.’