Image copyright Getty Images
Jim Ratcliffe could as soon as have been referred to as Dr No by commerce unions for his powerful negotiating stance, however the UK's richest man is a champion of the unloved.
Through shopping for up and turning across the cast-off elements of huge enterprise, the Mancunian has made his £21bn fortune.
From operations as soon as owned by the likes of oil large BP, Mr Ratcliffe has created a firm whose chemical compounds and uncooked supplies go into almost all the things we contact on a regular basis.
And it solely took him 20 years to do it.
Mr Ratcliffe, 65, has at all times been concerned in chemical compounds and trade.
After graduating with a diploma in chemical engineering from the University of Birmingham in 1974, he spent a very temporary spell at BP earlier than leaping to rival oil enterprise Esso as a trainee accountant.
Armed with an MBA from the London School of Business, Mr Ratcliffe moved to material and chemical compounds producer Courtaulds earlier than a career-changing step into the world of personal fairness when he joined Advent International in 1989.
Art of the deal
Advent served as a platform for Mr Ratcliffe to study the minimize and thrust of doing offers.
But after simply three years, he was already making a leap into co-owning an enterprise based mostly on what would turn out to be a well-worn technique.
He and fellow businessman John Hollowood determined to purchase BP's chemical compounds division in Hythe, Kent for £40m in 1992.
By 1994, it was valued at £100m when it floated on the London Stock Exchange.
It was a high-risk transfer, Mr Ratcliffe admitted.
"I began the enterprise within the days while you needed to put all of your worldly items on the desk," he informed the London Business School in an interview.
"I needed to put 100% of the fairness that I owned at that stage on the road, in order that was the home, financial savings and even the spouse and youngsters, which makes you very centered."
The enterprise, Inspec, went on to amass BP's speciality chemical compounds enterprise in Antwerp, Belgium.
Mr Ratcliffe left Inspec to kind his personal agency, Ineos, in 1998 which purchased the Belgian enterprise for £89m.
Today, Ineos is value £35bn, based on The Sunday Times Rich Listbased mostly on Mr Ratcliffe's technique of shopping for "retro or uns3xy amenities owned by massive companies the place you'd know they'd be sloppy with the fastened prices".
From 181 websites throughout 22 international locations, Ineos generates gross sales of round £45bn and employs 18,500 individuals.
Its uncooked supplies are utilized in all the things from packaging for toiletries, medicines and meals, to cell phones and furnishings.
Because of his determination by no means to drift the corporate and thus don't have any City shareholders to seek the advice of, Mr Ratcliffe, who owns 60% of Ineos, has been in a position to transfer rapidly on offers.
In its first 10 years, Ineos purchased greater than 20 operations from enormous firms equivalent to German chemical compounds maker BASF, Dow Chemicals of the United States and ICI, as soon as the largest producer within the UK.
Quadrupled gross sales
Arguably, a very powerful of those offers was Ineos's £5bn takeover of Innovene, BP's petrochemical enterprise, in 2005.
Overnight, it quadrupled Ineos's gross sales to greater than £18bn and doubled its employees numbers to 15,000.
Innovene additionally included the Grangemouth petrochemical plant and refinery in Scotland which, in 2013, turned the scene of a tense stand-off with commerce unions threatening strike motion over pay and pensions.
The disputewhich earned Mr Ratcliffe the Bond villain moniker of Dr Noled to Ineos asserting that it could shut the petrochemical plant and minimize 800 jobs.
Shortly afterwards, Ineos reversed its determination when the Unite union agreed to a survival plan to speculate £300m within the plant to maintain it open.
Ineos continues to increase both by way of acquisitions equivalent to shopping for the Forties Pipeline System from BP, which delivers 40% of the UK's North Sea oil and gasoline or by way of funding into controversial areas equivalent to fracking.
Ineos has pledged to speculate £650m in fracking and in 2016 created a lot fanfare across the arrival of the primary cargo of shale gasoline from the United States to reach within the UK.
The firm is at present locked in an authorized battle with the Scottish authorities over its moratorium on fracking.
Meanwhile, Mr Ratcliffe took a shocking step away from chemical compounds when he introduced plans to speculate £600m to construct a new car based mostly on Jaguar Land Rover's Defender, which was discontinued in 2016.
Ineos then purchased Belstaff, the luxurious motorbike put on maker whose jackets had been as soon as worn by actor Steve McQueen and modelled by the likes of David Beckham.
The firm then acquired the Swiss soccer group FC Lausanne-Sport.
Whether or not these companies may very well be classed as unloved shouldn't be clear, however Mr Ratcliffe clearly sees loads of potential in them.