Chemical engineer and businessman Sir James Arthur Ratcliffe is a British millionaire.
The Ineos chemicals firm, which Ratcliffe created in 1998 and currently controls two-thirds of, is led by Ratcliffe as chairman and CEO. It is anticipated that the group will generate $15 billion in revenue in 2019. His public persona is modest, and The Sunday Times has called him “publicity shy.”
Early life
On October 18, 1952, in Manchester, Sir James Arthur Ratcliffe was born.
Ratcliffe is the son of a joiner and an office worker who works in accounts.
Later, his father managed a facility that produced furniture for laboratories. When he was eleven years old, his family relocated to Yorkshire. Ratcliffe attended Beverley Grammar School and stayed in Hull until he was eighteen. In 1974, Ratcliffe received his chemical engineering degree from the University of Birmingham.
Net Worth of James Ratcliffe
The total wealth of James Ratcliffe is $19 billion. Since 1998, James Ratcliffe, a former engineer, has served as chairman of Ineos Group, a chemical giant with a $44 billion annual revenue forecast. He is no longer the CEO of any other company; only the one that has expanded through partnerships and acquisitions.
Ratcliffe, who is among the wealthiest persons in the UK today, prefers to maintain a low profile. Soon after accepting his first position with the multinational oil company Esso, Ratcliffe made the decision to further his knowledge of finance. He enrolled at the London Business School to study management accounting and pursue an MBA.
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After some time, he became one of the founders of INSPEC, which rented the former BP Chemicals location in Antwerp, Belgium. To purchase out INSPEC and the freehold of the Antwerp site, Ratcliffe founded Ineos in Hampshire in 1998.
Since then, among other purchases, Ineos has formed a joint venture with Germany’s BASF and paid $110 million for the European chlor-vinyls business of Belgian company Tessenderlo.
The $8.7 billion purchase of the Innovene division of the BP Group in 2005 is regarded as the company’s largest profit. It is presently one of the leading manufacturers of polystyrene and styrene monomers in the world. Ratcliffe still holds a two-thirds stake in the business that generates the majority of his income.
Career
Ratcliffe’s first work was with the multinational oil company Esso, but he later wanted to enhance his financial knowledge by majoring in management accounting and earning an MBA at the London Business School. In 1989, he eventually joined the US private equity firm Advent International.
He was one of the founding members of INSPEC, which had leased the BP Chemicals plant in Antwerp, Belgium. In order to acquire INSPEC and the freehold of the Antwerp site, Ratcliffe established Ineos in Hampshire in 1998.
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He relocated Ineos’s headquarters from Hampshire to Rolle, Switzerland, in 2010, reducing the tax the firm had to pay by £100 million annually.
Ratcliffe stated that he was “quite joyful about going back to the UK” when he opened the UK headquarters of the chemicals and energy group in Knightsbridge, London, in 2015.
He was content with UK policies, liked London as a business location, and wasn’t concerned about the idea of the UK exiting the EU. It is still an Anglo-Swiss corporation “for the time being.”
Personal Life:
They have two kids, George and Samuel, from Ratcliffe’s 1985 marriage to Amanda Townson. In 1995, they got divorced. From a previous union, he has a daughter with Maria Alessia Maresca, an Italian tax attorney. Catherine Polli is his current partner.
Hampshire, England, and Monaco are where Ratcliffe resides. The construction of a “luxury residence” at Thorns Beach, close to Beaulieu, on the Hampshire coast, to replace an existing two-bedroom bungalow was the goal of his fifth concept, which was less ambitious than the first four.
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Ratcliffe would reportedly save £4 billion in taxes as a result of his official shift of tax home from Hampshire to Monaco in September 2020.
Alongside Michael Schumacher, he also has an opulent home in the Swiss village of Gland on the beaches of Lake Geneva. On the Napoleon Bonaparte Imperial estate, where his palace is situated, princess Alix Napoléon also has a home.
As a lover of physical challenges, Ratcliffe has undertaken journeys to both the North and South Poles as well as a three-month motorcycle tour through South Africa.
He finished the 2013 Marathon Des Sables across the Sahara Desert, and he launched the charity “Go Run for Fun” to motivate kids to exercise by organizing celebrity-driven races.
Ratcliffe, a eurosceptic, has said that Ineos “supported the single market, but not the United States of Europe” from a commercial perspective. He is against the “layers and layers” of European regulations that, in his opinion, are making those nations’ economies more and more complicated and ineffective.
He has openly expressed his contempt for politicians, criticizing them for the manner in which they negotiated the Brexit withdrawal agreement and for their propensity to “lunch around with bankers” while showing less interest in engaging in economic discussions with industrialists and business owners.
The super yachts Hampshire and Hampshire II were both owned by Ratcliffe. Feadship built his first boat, which was named Barbara Jean. He received the Royal van Lent-built, 78 meters (256 feet) long Feadship Hampshire II in 2012, and he still owns it.
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