Suddenly, his eyes rounded, his face lit up and he let out a heartfelt cry: “It’s football!” » As if this passion for football explained everything, without needing to add more. On December 24, 2023, British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe reached an agreement with the American Glazer family to buy a 25% stake in the Manchester United club, for £1.25 billion (€1.45 billion).
However, at the beginning of July 2023, the negotiations were slipping. Standing in the pub he owns in Knightsbridge, an upscale neighborhood in central London, he tried to explain his desire to get his hands on this iconic team. Certainly, the club was extremely prestigious, but its results had been very disappointing for a decade, while the Glazer family had underinvested in the stadium for a long time, leaving it in a deplorable state. The profitability of such an investment was far from obvious.
So the tall, lanky businessman, who made his fortune buying abandoned industrial assets, ended up speaking from the gut. “You know, we don’t make clubs like that anymore. The opportunity to buy one doesn’t come around often. » Supporter of Manchester United since childhood, lover of sport in general, but particularly passionate about football, the petrochemical engineer, now aged 71, could not pass up such a godsend. “And then, I’m over sixty, I have every right to have a little fun. »
“The club will not lose value”
Mr Ratcliffe therefore decided to ignore the club’s particularly high valuation, at £5 billion, while its turnover for the year 2022-2023 was only £650 million, and that the accounts were not quite in balance (slight net loss of 29 million pounds). “We’re not here to make money”, he retorts. In any case, it is a long-term investment: “The club will not lose value. » Understand: in five, ten or twenty years, it will always be possible to resell it, with a probably juicy capital gain.
Born in 1952 in Failsworth, a suburb of Manchester, into a modest family, the first in his family to go to university, Mr. Ratcliffe went, in a decade, from almost complete obscurity to the brightest light . In the 1990s, the former executive of large oil companies spotted an opportunity: the oil majors were getting rid of their petrochemical assets at a low price, which were not profitable enough for their liking.
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