James Arthur “Jim” Ratcliffe (born 18 October 1952) is a British chemical engineer turned financier and industrialist. Ratcliffe is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Ineos chemicals group, which he founded in 1998 and still owns two-thirds of, and which has been estimated to have a turnover of $44bn. He does not have a high public profile, and has been described by the Sunday Times as “publicity shy”. According to the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List, he is one of the richest people in the UK.
Early life and education
Born in Manchester, the son of a joiner father and an accounts office worker mother, Ratcliffe lived there in a council house in Failsworth until the age of ten. His father eventually ran a factory making laboratory furniture. Aged ten, he moved with his family to Yorkshire, and Ratcliffe attended Beverley Grammar School and lived in Hull up to the age of 18.
Ratcliffe graduated from the University of Birmingham with a degree in chemical engineering in 1974.
Career
His first job was with oil giant Esso, but he decided to broaden his skills into finance by studying management accounting and taking an MBA at London Business School. He subsequently, in 1989, joined US private equity group Advent International.
Ineos
Ratcliffe was a co-founder of INSPEC, which leased the former BP Chemicals site in Antwerp, Belgium. In 1998 Ratcliffe formed Ineos in Hampshire to buy-out INSPEC and the freehold of the Antwerp site.
From this small base, using high-yield debt to finance deals, Ratcliffe started buying unwanted operations from groups such as ICI and BP, selecting targets based on their potential to double their earnings over a 5-year period. In 2006 Ineos bought BP’s refining and petrochemical arm Innovene, giving Ineos refineries and plants in Scotland, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium and Canada.
In April 2010, Ratcliffe moved Ineos’s head office from Hampshire to Rolle, Switzerland, decreasing the amount of tax the company paid by £100m a year.
In 2015, Ratcliffe opened the UK headquarters of the chemicals and energy group in Knightsbridge, London along with gas and oil trading, and other functions, saying he was “very cheerful about coming back to the UK”. He was pleased with UK policy, London as a business base, and untroubled by the prospect of the UK leaving the EU. “For the time being” it remains an Anglo-Swiss company. It retains a head office in Rolle Switzerland for businesses in INEOS Group AG. The Anglo/Swiss business continues to grow. Full year 2015 EBITDA was €577 million compared to €253 million for 2014.
James Ratcliffe is a former chemical engineer and the current chairman and CEO of Ineos who has an estimated net worth of $11 billion as of January 2018. He is the 33rd richest person in the United Kingdom and is ranked 1268th in the list of World Billionaires according to Forbes. James Arthur Ratcliffe was born on October 18, 1952 in Manchester, United Kingdom. He earned his degree in chemical engineering from the University of Birmingham in 1974. He started accumulating his estimated net worth of $1.1 billion when he took his first job with oil giant Esso. However, he still wanted to broaden his skills in finance by studying management accounting and took an MBA at London Business School. While working at the $43 billion in sales chemical powerhouse Ineos Group, he has helped grow the firm over the years. It has been through a series of acquisitions and partnerships including the purchase of Belgium-based Tessenderlo’s European chlor-vinyls business for $110 million, a $1 billion sale of a 50% stake in Ineos’s European refinery operations to Petrochina, and a joint venture with Germany’s BASF. Its biggest acquisition happened in 2005 with an $8.7 billion deal to buy BP Group’s Innovene business. As a result, it is now one of the world’s biggest producers of styrene monomer and polystyrene.
Source: