Britain's richest man, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, will once again see his name circulated in the media due to the Glazers deciding to put Manchester United up for sale.
Ratcliffe has previously been linked with buying the Premier League giants, following a failed attempt to buy Chelsea in May. But the door has now reopened at United after the Glazer family announced on Tuesday night that they would consider offers for either a partial or full sale of the club.
The Glazers have been deeply unpopular owners since they took over in 2005, with frequent protests during their reign in the boardroom. But it now appears they are ready to end their association with the Old Trafford club.
Ratcliffe has made no secret of his desire to buy United and even explored the possibility of buying the club he supports in the summer. His interest was shot down, however.
“Manchester United is owned by the Glazer family. I have met Joel and Avram. They are the nicest people, I have to say, proper gentlemen. They don’t want to sell it,” he said at a Financial Times Live event.
“It’s owned by the six children of the father. If it had been for sale in the summer, yes we would probably have had a go following on from the Chelsea thing. But we can’t sit around hoping one day Manchester United will become available.
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“So what will happen now? We have a sports franchise. We own a third of Mercedes’ Formula 1 team. Robbed last year. The one thing we don’t have… Football is the most popular sport in the world. We should have a premier club. Nice has got a very interesting history. We’ll have a look at what we might be able to do with Nice.”
Now the club is up for sale will he change his mind? It might not appear so. After deciding against buying Liverpool, a spokesperson for Ratcliffe released a statement earlier this month to suggest the billionaire's stance has changed.
It read: "Our position has developed since the summer and we are now focusing our efforts in Nice and raising our ambitions for the club to make them into a top-tier club in France to compete with PSG. This would represent much better value for our investment than buying one of the top-tier Premier League clubs."
Ratcliffe has also had prior dealings with the Raine Group, managing United's sale and who also led Roman Abramovich's sale of Chelsea earlier this year. Submitting an eleventh hour bid, Ratcliffe pleaded: “My message to Raine is don’t discount our offer. We are British and have great intentions for Chelsea. If I was Raine I wouldn’t close any door.”
In the end, Raine Group rejected his bid and plumped for Todd Boehly's consortium. It remains to be seen if Ratcliffe will once again engage with the investment banking firm.
Ratcliffe is worth around £13.48bn ($16.3bn) – making him Britain’s wealthiest person and the 111th richest person in the world. He would certainly have the funds to buy out the Glazers and insisted last month that he would not be afraid to throw his money around.
“Might I run it differently? Or might I run it? I think the answer about performance of Manchester United is a simple one. The biggest correlation of success in football is money. Without question," Ratcliffe added.
"It’s not the only one because you have outliers like Brighton. But the biggest one by far is – if you’ve got the highest revenues you can afford the best players, you play the best football. Manchester United is one of those. It was one of those top three clubs.
"The two in Spain, Madrid and Barca, then Manchester United. They all earned revenues of about £800m. A few more have joined that club now, of course. You’ve got Bayern Munich, you’ve got PSG. You’ve got, I can hardly say it, Manchester City. And Liverpool.
"But Manchester United are not playing in that league of those other teams, at the moment. And they haven’t done really since Sir Alex stepped down. So something is not… they are not firing on all cylinders. That would be my point on performance.”
