Profiling potential new Chelsea owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe following £4bn bid

Ineos owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has confirmed that he has made a late bid to buy Chelsea. The £4 billion offer comes just as it seemed a decision would soon be reached on which of the three other contenders would be taking over from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in west London.

Todd Boehly, Sir Martin Broughton and Stephen Pagliuca all led respective consortiums to take over the reins at Chelsea but Ratcliffe has now evidently thrown his hat into the ring. The billionaire’s offer comes just 24 hours after Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Nadine Dorries, sent a warning to the Blues, urging the club to speed up the process.

Speaking on the BBC’s Newscast podcast, she said: “Chelsea is very much on borrowed time at the moment. There is a very short window left for that sale to take place. It has to happen soon.”

READ MORE: Chelsea sale: Sir Jim Ratcliffe makes sensational late £4bn bid amid UK Government warning

Now, football.london takes a closer look at who exactly Ratcliffe is and what he has said regarding a potential takeover.

Who is Sir Jim Ratcliffe?

Ratcliffe is a 69-year-old British billionaire. He is the chairman and CEO of Ineos chemicals group, a company he founded in 1998, with their estimated turnover in 2021 thought to be €18.8billion (£15.8billion).

He ranked 25th on The Times 2021 rich list, with an estimated worth of £6.33billion – falling £5.82billion from the previous year when he ranked fifth. Ratcliffe currently owns Ligue 1 side OGC Nice, completing a €100 (£84million) million takeover of the French outfit in August 2019.

What has been said

“We put an offer in this morning,” Ratcliffe told The Times on Friday. “We are the only British bid. Our motives are simply to try and create a very fine club in London. We have no profit motive because we make our money in other ways.”

This comes just a month after he explained why he opted to not buy the Blues from Abramovich back in 2019. “There was some early exchange but we were a significant way apart on valuations,” Ratcliffe told BBC Five Live in March.

“The issue with Chelsea is its stadium. We are all getting older and it is a decade of your life to resolve that.”

Speaking about the Premier League giants to The Times back in 2019, he said: “Even though clubs have those valuations today, nobody has ever paid those amounts of money.

“How much did Abramovich pay for Chelsea, £100 million? The Glazers, what £500 million? You can say it’s worth three, four billion but no one has ever paid those sums.

“Ineos has always tried to take a sensible approach. We don’t like squandering money or we wouldn’t be where we are today.

“It’s part of our DNA, trying to spend sensibly.”