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ONE OF Britain’s richest people has told of his humble start in life growing up on a council estate – before building a fortune which now stands at £29billion.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has surged to second in this year’s new Sunday Times Rich List and is currently bidding to buy Premier League giants Manchester United.
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But his present-day wealth is a far cry from his upbringing – and he has admitted to being fired from his first job after just three days, when his bosses at BP discovered he had ezcema.
Joiner’s son Sir Jim was born in the Greater Manchester town of Failsworth and lived in a council house until the age of ten.
He now resides in glamorous Monaco and his possessions include a £130m yacht which includes a beach club and a helipad.
Experts now put his wealth at £29.688billion, boosting him up 27 places to second in the new Rich List.
Only Indian-born British businessman Gopi Hinduja and his family sit higher, with an estimated fortune of £35billion.
Yet he has said: “You should see a picture of the council house where I started out.”
Sir Jim, 70, has also revealed he was sacked just three days into his first job – before setting up his own firm Ineos, a multinational chemicals company now employing 26,000 people across the world.
Ineos has an annual turnover of £45billion and sells 60million tons of chemicals each year.
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Remembering his early days of working, Sir Jim has said: “I did have this inkling that I wanted to be successful — that I wanted to be a millionaire one day. But I was just dreaming, really.”
On being dismissed by BP as a 21-year-old, he said: “I was told, ‘You can’t work here with eczema. We can’t spend the money on training you for five years then find you’ve got an allergy, so you’re on your bike’.”
He then managed to secure a post with rival petrol firm Esso, who sent him to the London Business School where he honed the skills which made him a specialist in turning around failing companies.
And in 1998 he mortgaged his house and bought an Antwerp-based chemical company, which he and two friends turned into Ineos.
Since 2016 the firm has been based in offices opposite upmarket store Harrods in Knightsbridge, west London.
Sir Jim said: “The venture capital world is very simple. If you do bad deals, you get fired. If you don’t do any deals, you get fired. But it’s a good learning curve.”
The businessman, who is on his second marriage and has three children, has homes in London and in Hampshire.
The boyhood Manchester United fan revealed his interest in buying the Old Trafford club in January this year after the Red Devils were put up for sale by the US-based Glazer family.
But he faces competition from Qatar‘s Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani, who is thought to have bid £5billion – still short of the Glazers’ £6billion valuation of the club.
Sir Jim previously tried to buy United’s Premier League rivals Chelsea last summer after Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich was forced to sell the west London club as part of sanctions imposed following Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine.
But his £4.25billion bid for the Blues was rejected, with US investor Todd Boehly and his consortium taking control instead.
Ineos already own French football club Nice who are currently mid-table in that country’s top flight, Ligue 1, as well as Swiss side Lausanne and a third of F1 motor racing team Mercedes.
And his Team Ineos cycling team has won seven editions of the annual Tour de France, boasting riders such as Sir Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas.
Rich List compiler Robert Watts has said of Sir Jim: “This is a guy from an ordinary background who has created extraordinary wealth very quickly. He seems unaffected by the wealth. He’s calm, quiet and doesn’t have the brashness you might think a billionaire would.
“Ratcliffe shows you don’t have do well in the classroom or be anything special early in your working life to make it as an entrepreneur.”
Sir Jim was knighted in the late Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2018, for services to business and investment.
The new Sunday Times Rich List is the 35th, showing Britain has 171 billionaires – down six from 2022, the first fall in numbers since the 2007-2008 financial crash.
Their combined wealth is up by £30.734billion to £683.856billion.
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