Sir Jim Ratcliffe is making moves towards being the new owner of Manchester United, but nobody can force the Glazers to sell the club.
For somebody once described by The Sunday Times as ‘publicity shy’, Sir Jim Ratcliffe sure has been making a lot of headlines in 2022. Earlier this year, he was one of the unsuccessful bidders in the race to buy Chelsea. And now, even though he’s being linked with buying Manchester United and releasing their fans from their Glazer-induced personal hell, the team that he already owns (OGC Nice) has been on a bit of a spending spree in the Premier League that is almost certainly not over yet.
The confirmation of his interest both is and isn’t a surprise. On the one hand, Ratcliffe is a natural fit for the club in the 21st century, being both a billionaire and a Manchester United supporter. But on the other, it is less than four months since he was bidding for Chelsea and even that bid seemed a little, well, half-hearted.
Ratcliffe’s involvement with the long-winded Stamford Bridge takeover was brief. His bid of £4.25bn was made directly to the club, bypassing Raine, the American bank given the job of overseeing the sale of the club after government sanctions were put in place against Roman Abramovich, and after the deadline for bids had passed, but the final decision was made to go with the consortium fronted by Todd Boehly. It is not clear why Ratcliffe’s bid came at such a late stage.
Ratcliffe is the chairman and CEO of the Ineos chemicals company in which he owns a 60% shareholding, and is believed to be worth in the region of £18bn-£20bn. His first involvement in football came in 2017 in Switzerland, when he bought FC Lausanne, and in August 2019 he also purchased the French club OGC Nice. He relocated to nearby Monaco in September 2020, a move that would, it was described at the time, save him £4bn in tax.
Ratcliffe was born in Failsworth in Manchester, and is a Manchester United supporter, despite taking a Chelsea season ticket after moving to London and owning clubs in Switzerland and France. It’s probably fair to say that Ratcliffe’s time with OGC Nice hasn’t been an unqualified success; just two days after his purchase of the club, they had a Ligue Un match against Marseilles suspended after a homophobic banner was hung from a stand. A resurgence in hooliganism has long been a problem at Nice, as it has elsewhere in France.
On the pitch, any hopes that the change in ownership at Nice…
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