Jim Ratcliffe buys 25% of Manchester United shares

One of the richest people in Great Britain, Jim Ratcliffe, has agreed to purchase a minority stake in the English football club Manchester United. According to a number of sources, he will buy a 25% stake in the club for approximately £1.3–1.5 billion. Thus, some result has been achieved in the saga with the sale of Manchester United, which has already stretched over 11 months. However, it clearly will not suit the team’s fans, who demanded that the current owners, the Glazer family, sell the club. After all, it is the Glazers who will retain control over its activities. They had a chance to sell Manchester United entirely. Qatari Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani expressed his readiness to buy it for £5 billion. But after his offer was rejected, he withdrew his bid to buy the club, leaving Mr Ratcliffe as the only bidder.

One of the richest people in Great Britain, the controlling shareholder of the transnational chemical concern Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe, will soon become a co-owner of one of the most popular football clubs in the world, Manchester United. Several British publications reported this at once. The BBC, in particular, claims that Mr. Ratcliffe agreed with the owners of Manchester United – the Glazer family (95% of the club’s voting shares are owned by the six heirs of the American businessman Malcolm Glazer, who died in 2014) – to acquire a 25% stake. According to Sky Sports, Jim Ratcliffe agreed to pay £1.3 billion for this share. According to Daily Mail sources, it will cost more – £1.5 billion. However, it has not yet been explained which shares the head of Ineos will buy. Manchester United has two types – classes A and B. Class A shares give one vote each, class B shares ten. According to one version, Jim Ratcliffe’s package will consist of equal shares of both types of securities. That is, in any case, control will remain in the hands of the Americans. The proposed deal still needs to be approved by the Manchester United board of directors. Approval is expected in the coming days.

Note that the Glazers put forward Manchester United, which Malcolm Glazer bought in parts in 2003–2005 (in total they paid £800 million for the club, with most of the money received in the form of loans, which were added to the balance sheet of Manchester United itself) , at the end of 2022. Even then, their requests – and they wanted to receive £6 billion, which is almost two and a half times the club’s capitalization (Manchester’s shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange) – were called unrealistic. Note that at the moment the most expensive transaction for the sale of a sports club is the change of ownership of the Washington Commanders (American football). The team was sold for $6bn (£4.93bn) this spring. And the largest sale of the football club itself was the deal for Chelsea – in the spring of 2023, Todd Boehly acquired it from Roman Abramovich for £2.5 billion, however, taking into account the obligation to invest another £1.75 billion in the team, the total amount increases to £ 4.25 billion

Despite the clearly inflated demands of the Glazers, there were many people willing to buy the club, since their position was regarded as a starting one. But time passed, and the negotiations led nowhere. The Glazers categorically refused to reduce the price. Along with Jim Ratcliffe, one of the sons of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Jassim ibn Hamad Al Thani, also advanced to the final round of bidding. In early October, he put forward another improved proposal. It looked quite impressive. According to the BBC, Sheikh Jassim offered £5 billion in cash and without raising debt capital for 100% of the club. In addition, he committed himself to repay all existing debts of the club, which, according to the Manchester club’s March accounts, amounted to more than £960 million. Finally, Sheikh Jassim was ready to guarantee investment in the development of the club, in particular in the reconstruction of the Old Trafford stadium and the team’s training base , another £1.4 billion. But this option was rejected, and Sheikh Jassim withdrew from the negotiation process.

One of Sky Sports’ interlocutors, familiar with how the negotiations went, called the incident “unreal.” “The Glazers’ assessment was insane. Sheikh Jassim offered them almost double the club’s current capitalization. He paid with real money, he paid off all debts, he was ready to invest in reconstruction and give money to buy new players. But this wasn’t enough for the Glazers,” said the source. “And now, after almost a year of negotiations, it turns out that someone will pay twice the actual cost for a 25 percent stake. This is nonsense. If they really wanted to just sell a minority stake, they could have easily done it privately back in November last year. So what now? What will change with Ratcliffe’s arrival? A new strategy, a new management scheme will emerge, relations with the fans will improve (most of them are demanding that the Glazers sell the club.— “Kommersant”)? No, there will just be another shareholder.”

However, the Daily Mail, citing its sources, believes that Jim Ratcliffe may soon increase his stake in the club, eventually bringing it to a controlling stake. However, Sky Sports’ interlocutor doubts that the Briton has the money for this. According to the Sunday Times Rich List 2023, Mr Ratcliffe is worth £29.7 billion (most of it from Ineos shares). Allocating the £6 billion sought by the Glazers from them – and having decided to pay about £1.5 billion for a 25% stake in the club, Jim Ratcliffe actually agreed with this estimate – is extremely difficult. Sheikh Jassim’s personal fortune, according to Forbes, is significantly less – only £890 million. But his family controls assets worth approximately £275 billion.

Alexander Petrov