Jim Ratcliffe, who is the billionaire INEOS boss who wants to beat Luna Rossa

Today, at 2 p.m., the Louis Vuitton Cup final begins. The AC75 Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli AC75s against INEOS Britannia: whoever reaches seven wins first (each match-race is worth one point), wins.
And earns the right to challenge America’s Cup defender Emirates Team New Zealand.

Jim Ratcliffe, Patrizio Bertelli’s rival

On one side Luna Rossa, his team captained by Max Sirena, with Checco Bruni and Jimmy Spithill as helmsmen, a creation of Patrizio Bertelli who has dedicated a good part of his life to the conquest of the “old jug” (we are at seven Cup challenges. No one has done more than him).
We have already told you his story and his collection of unique boats.
On the other INEOS Britannia, captained at sea by Sir Ben Ainslie and supported by another baronet. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s second richest man and founder of oil giant INEOS.
Ratcliffe, 71, has “taken out” all previous sponsors of English Cup campaigns in order to remain the only one.
Let’s get to know him closely, the real rival of Patrizio Bertelli, who is also driven by an ambitious challenge : to bring the Cup back to England, where it has been missing since the first edition in 1851.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a very (but very) rich sportsman

by IdaCastiglioniAt Auckland in 2021 Jim Ratcliffe was telling that the one with Ben Ainslie had been the most expensive Gin and Tonic in history.
He was probably talking about the history of the America’s Cup because, if we refer to the real story, it must have been much more expensive than the one Franklin Delano Roosvelt offered his advisers in late 1942 (after Pearl Harbor) in the Situation Room of the White House when they decided to put a few trillion dollars on the table and commit the United States to World War II.
Back to the Cup.
Jim Ratcliffe is referring to his first meeting, which took place in 2018 at a private London club, with Ben Ainslie, the iconic winner of four gold medals-plus one silver medal-at the Olympics in the Laser and Finn classes between the 1996 Atlanta and 2012 London editions.

He jokes about it again and says that “we actually had several Gin and Tonics that time.”
Drinks that later cost the tycoon a whopping 153 million pounds. In fact, the friendship between the two later resulted in Ratcliffe’s decision to become the main sponsor of the British boat, the one that gave the consortium its name, for the 36th America’s Cup in 2021 in Auckland.
It is also reported that Ratcliffe liquidated cash from previous sponsors (Ben’s 2017 challenge was backed by Land Rover and BAR Technologies) in order to remain the only one.
The results were not what might have been expected from the weight of so many Olympic medals, but Ineos Team UK, after a subdued start, made it to the final of the Prada Cup against Luna Rossa, and that was the best result achieved by a British team in the America’s Cup since 1964 when Sovereign, the David Boyd-designed hull, was soundly defeated (partly because England had fallen so far behind the United States technically).
Remembering that 1964 challenge is a sore subject for the two Sirs (appointed by Queen Elizabeth): for Ratcliffe, as for Ainslie, winning the America’s Cup is becoming a matter of national pride.
Among the 5 teams engaged in this 37th challenge, Britain’s Ineos Britannia was able to count on the most resources.
Ineos is a multinational company that operates in both the oil, chemical and industrial sectors and, like Ineos Manufactoring Italia, owns the Solvay plant in Rosignano, which produces soda ash.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, 71, is a chemical engineer and owes his every fortune to intelligence.
Britain’s second richest man, who has a personal fortune of 30 billion pounds, grew up in Failsworth, Lancashire, is the son of a carpenter who made laboratory furniture in his shed, and until he was 10 grew up with his family in a council house.
He studied chemical engineering at the University of Birmingham and in 1980 earned an MBA from London Business School.
Much research after college, as well as innate skills, led him to the acquisition of failing companies and unthinkable financial transactions.
He first worked in Esso and then moved into private equity.
He then founded Ineos and began acquiring BP and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) assets; by 2007 he owned petrochemical plants and refineries from Scotland to continental Europe and Canada: now he is at the head of a veritable empire.

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Ratcliffe lives between Hampshire, England, and Munich, where he has been a resident for a decade.
In 2010 he moved the headquarters of his company to Rolle, on Lake Geneva.
In recent years he has bought the soccer teams FC Lausanne Sport and France’s Nice, the cycling team Team Sky, which also won the Tour de France, and with $130 million has joined the Mercedes Formula 1 team as a sponsor.
He is also a minority investor in Manchester United.
He is passionate about sports, adventure and extreme travel.
He is more of a marathon runner than a runner and has crossed Namibia partly on foot and partly on a bicycle, climbed the Matterhorn, walked beyond the Polar Circle to the South Pole, and concluded motorcycle raids of many months. Last winter he also sailed on Britannia as a cyclor, apparently with good power production.

In the Mediterranean he sails on Hampshire II (which here in Barcelona takes up an entire dock), a 78 m super motor yacht, built in Holland in 2012 by Feadship at Royal van Lent shipyards and valued at $150 million.
But his favorite boat is Sherpa, a 74 m icebreaker shuttle, launched in 2018 and costing $120 million.

Ratcliffe has completed several expeditions on Sherpa, both to the North and South Poles.
The shuttle has a range of 5200 miles, 7 guest cabins and 11 crew cabins, cruising speed 13 knots.
On deck, 2 huge fixed cranes with 12 m and 20 m booms for loading equipment, pulling the helicopter and various vehicles out of the underdeck, and placing the landing pad.
The garage is served by an elevator.
In warm climates, pieces of the side can be moved, transforming the deck into a beach with associated swimming platform.
These motor superyachts are all strictly blue.
If he cannot bring the Cup back to England, surely Sir Jim Ratcliffe will have many other diversions to distract him.

Quite unlike Ben (Sir Ben Ainslie), who has devoted his entire life to sailing, winning the most prestigious Olympic medals in the world in the sport (same number as Torben Grael, who has a silver instead of a gold).
His dinghies have always had the same name, Rita.
As a young boy, he was on a trip to Lanzarote for the Optimist World Championships.
His mother had visited the local shrine, taken a Santa Rita medallion and sewed it onto his life jacket.
Ben had then won the Championships.
That is whyBritanniais also called Rita by him and by all.