Sir James Arthur Ratcliffe FIChemE (born 18 October 1952) is a British billionaire, chemical engineer and businessman. Ratcliffe is the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the INEOS chemicals group, which he founded in 1998. The company is estimated to have had a turnover of $65 billion in 2021. He does not have a high public profile, and was once described by The Sunday Times as “publicity shy”. In May 2018, Ratcliffe was the richest person in the UK, with a net worth of £21.05 billion. As of May 2023, the Sunday Times Rich List 2023 estimated his net worth at £29.688 billion, making him the second wealthiest figure in the UK. In September 2020, Ratcliffe officially changed his tax residence from Hampshire to Monaco, a move that it is estimated will save him £4 billion in tax.
Ratcliffe’s fortune derives from his majority stake in closely held Ineos, one of the world’s largest chemical producers. The London-based company is valued based on a calculation of the group’s average enterprise value-to-Ebitda multiple of three publicly traded peers: LyondellBasell Industries NV, Saudi Basic Industries Corp and Solvay SA.
The Ebitda figure used in this analysis has been calculated by Bloomberg from the five-year average Ebitda of subsidiary Ineos Group Holdings between 2018 and 2022. This average is 14% lower than the subsidiary’s 2022 unadjusted Ebitda figure. The same decrease has been applied to the group’s calculated Ebitda figure for 2022 to approximate the group’s five-year average Ebitda figure.
The company has revenue of about $65 billion, and has 26,000 employees across almost 30 countries, according to its website.
Ratcliffe also owns a superyacht, Hampshire II, which is valued using the current asking prices for similar length vessels from the same ship yard, according to a person familiar with the boats who asked not to be identified as he works in the industry and the information is private.
Richard Longden, a spokesperson for Ineos, declined to comment on Ratcliffe’s net worth.
Biography
Ratcliffe was born in Failsworth, Lancashire (now in Greater Manchester), the son of a father who started out as a joiner, and a mother who was an accounts office worker. He was raised in a council house in the town until the age of 10, when the family moved to East Yorkshire. He was educated at Beverley Grammar School. He studied chemical engineering at Birmingham University, gaining a BSc, and later gained an MBA from London Business School in 1980. Ratcliffe’s father eventually ran a factory making laboratory furniture
He joined private equity firm Advent International in 1989 and three years later invested his life’s savings to buy BP’s specialty chemicals unit, according to a 2007 profile in the Telegraph. He became chief executive officer and a slew of acquisitions followed with the company, Inspec, listing on the London Stock Exchange in 1994. He left Inspec four years after that to lead the buyout of its Belgian chemicals plant, which he named Ineos.
More acquisitions followed and within a decade Ineos had become one of the largest chemical companies in the world. Ratcliffe attracted criticism in 2013 when a stand-off with the union at Ineos’ Grangemouth plant attracted national attention. The billionaire extracted a three-year pay freeze from his workers in exchange for keeping the plant open. Ratcliffe moved back to the UK in 2016, six years after relocating to Switzerland for tax reasons.
He moved to Monaco in 2018, two years after backing Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Milestones
- 1952 James Arthur Ratcliffe is born in Manchester, England.
- 1974 Joins Esso after studying chemical engineering at university.
- 1989 Takes job at Advent, a private equity firm.
- 1992 Leads buyout of Inspec Group.
- 1998 Acquires Ineos from Inspec.
- 2006 Buys BP’s refineries in Europe and Canada.
- 2013 Stand-off with union at Scottish refinery attracts national attention.
- 2016 Ineos vessel transports first shale shipment from U.S. to Europe.
