2023-12-24 16:49:09
The American owners remain in control, of course, but the sale of 25% of the shares to the 71-year-old industrialist represents a first significant disengagement since their arrival in 2005. Before, perhaps, a more significant withdrawal?
The boss of Ineos, already owner of OGC Nice among others, paid 1.25 billion pounds (around 1.44 billion euros) to enter the capital, according to the club press release.
The agreement provides that Ineos will have “responsibility for the management” of football-related matters. Ratcliffe recently declared that he wanted to see Manchester United, currently in sporting difficulties, “find their place once more”.
The club is eighth in the Premier League, 12 points behind leader Arsenal following its defeat on Saturday at West Ham (2-0), its eighth in 18 days. In the Champions League, he was eliminated in the first round, in last place in Group A.
This is not the epilogue that the new minority shareholder, eager to buy the club in its entirety, dreamed of, nor the supporters of the Red Devils, angry by nearly two decades of decried governance and synonymous, in their minds, with sporting decline. .
The latter accuse the Glazers of having put the club in debt at the time of its takeover and of not having invested enough to allow the Mancunian institution to remain competitive.
Past glory, intact attractiveness
They therefore welcomed with relief and optimism the announcement, in November 2022, of a reflection concerning “all strategic alternatives, including a new investment in the club, a sale or other transactions involving the company”.
The past year has been marked by successive offers from Ratcliffe, one of Britain’s richest people, and Sheikh Jassim Ben Hamad Al Thani, chairman of Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB).
The agreement provides for an investment of 300 million dollars (272 million euros) for the renovation of the famous Old Trafford stadium. Ratcliffe also promised to improve the Carrington training center and attract players capable of putting the Red Devils back at the center of Europe.
The dust has indeed begun to cover the trophy cabinet of Manchester United, one of the most successful in the kingdom, but whose last league title dates back ten years (2013) and the last of its three Champions Leagues, fifteen years (2008).
The former club of Bobby Charlton, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo now lives sportingly in the shadow of neighbor Manchester City (owned by the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates), but it nevertheless retains a certain attractiveness throughout the world.
At the end of October, he announced a turnover of 648.4 million pounds (744 million euros) for last season, during which he won the League Cup and finished in fourth place in the championship.
According to the press, the owners were demanding a check for 6 billion pounds (6.9 billion euros) for the total sale of a club acquired by the late Malcolm Glazer, the father, in 2005 for 790 million pounds ( approximately 910 million euros).
Ratcliffe, riche “Brexiter”
The amount requested and the procrastination got the better of Sheikh Jassim’s patience. And Ratcliffe, an avowed supporter of the Red Devils who grew up as a child in social housing near Manchester, remained alone in the running in the home stretch.
Le stade de Manchester United, Old Trafford © Oli SCARFF / AFP/Archives
The entrepreneur knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, in 2018, founded the company Ineos twenty years earlier, which became an industrial giant employing more than 26,000 people in 29 countries, at the cost of multiple company buyouts and cost reductions. everything goes.
A fierce negotiator, particularly with unions, he defended “Brexit” as favorable to the United Kingdom, “a very creative and hardworking nation”. “We don’t need people in Europe to tell us how to manage our country,” he said.
This political bias is due less to assumed patriotism than to its desire to circumvent European environmental standards, according to NGOs which point out the devastation caused by its petrochemical company (air and water pollution, plastic waste, etc).
Ineos, of which it owns 60%, has increased its investments in the world of sport, whether in football (Lausanne, Nice), cycling (Ineos Grenadier, former Team Sky), Formula 1 (participation in Mercedes ) or even sailing (Ineos Britannia).
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