Jim Ratcliffe Reveals Deadline for Ruben Amorim at Man United

Yeah.

That's a good question. Why would you want to come to a place that's sunny and friendly? Yeah. Why we came here? I mean, part of it sort of quality of life, you know. Lots of people at my sort of age retire to a place that's warmer and more comfortable and a bit more relaxing, you know, but I obviously haven't retired. But to be honest, the reason we came out here, which was a few years ago now, was when there was the spectre of Jeremy Corbyn wrestling to raise a man.

Yeah, we went back to the UK for 16 to 19 for about three years. And then we had that concern about Jeremy Corbyn coming back in, and that clearly wouldn't have been a good outcome for us. So we decided we needed to find a solution to that.

No. Europe's a very tough place for chemicals. The world at the moment is a difficult place because if you think about the three main regions that we operate in — China, Europe and America — China, which is peculiar to our industry to an extent, has vastly overbuilt, not only for China but for the world in many cases. So that's put a lot of pressure in our marketplace. Europe is simply a mess because of high energy costs and carbon taxes which are unsustainable and a very slow response to tariff protection. And then America is not in a bad place, but it's a bit unsettled at the moment because of Trump and his tariff negotiations. But Europe is by far and away the worst, most difficult place for chemicals, and quite a lot of INEOS is based in Europe.

Correct. Correct. And correct. Yeah.

Yeah. We just have to hunker down during this sort of difficult period.

Oh no. No. Not at all. No. Because for two reasons. One, we don't have any covenants in our banking facilities, because covenants trip you up. So we don't have covenants. Secondly, we sit on a lot of cash. So the two principal legs of INEOS are INEOS Group and what we call INEOS Quattro, because it's got four businesses in it, and both of them sit on two billion of cash each.

Grim. I would say no other word for it really. I don't think there'll be much chemicals left in 10 years' time unless something radical happens, because ultimately one of the primary costs in chemicals is energy. And we're not 10 or 20 or 30 percent disadvantaged against the United States or the Middle East, but we're four or five hundred percent. It's four or five times the price. And when we're talking about energy, we're talking about gas and electricity. And we can't cope with that. And on top of that, you've got carbon tax. What they're trying to do with a carbon tax is improve our carbon footprint. What in reality they're doing is we don't have any cash left to invest. So ultimately all these units — you can see there's a whole slew of facilities in Europe closing down and what happens is it gets replaced by Chinese imports. But China is a coal-based economy so you're bringing imports in to replace low-carbon products in Europe, but what good's that doing the planet if you're just replacing low-carbon with high-carbon product? And you're closing down — bear in mind chemicals finishes up in just about every product you can imagine. Every single product you see in the hospital or your iPhone or your car or your washing machine has got chemicals in it, and all the consumables like shampoos and detergents and all that sort of thing. It has a huge economic importance because it's the fourth largest business in Europe, chemicals. It's about three-quarters of a trillion. But it's also hugely strategic. You don't want to be completely reliant on imported materials for all of your products, particularly where the world is today. Surely we've learned our lesson from Russia and gas. The reason gas is where it is today is because we fell out with Russia and they cut off the gas supply. And chemicals is strategic as well as economic.

Million jobs. A million direct jobs and probably you multiply that by 10 if you look at all the indirects that are related in terms of services and what have you. So there's probably 10 million jobs in Europe and three-quarters of a trillion in value. The automotive industry to put it in perspective is 1.2 trillion. Chemicals is 700 billion, three-quarters of a trillion.

So they're huge. Those are two of the four biggest industries in Europe, automotive and chemicals. And they're both in a horrible place but largely because of government and the decisions government's making.

If you step back a minute, there are three large chemical facilities in the UK which have got what we would call a cracker at the heart of them. So they're big petrochemical facilities. You've got one in Wilton, in the northeast. You've got one in Grangemouth, which is on the river. And then you've got one in a place called Mossmoran, which is just north of Grangemouth. And two of those three are going to close. Wilton's already closed. Mossmoran is I'm sure going to close in the next couple of years, which just leaves Grangemouth. And Grangemouth is a good unit and it's the umbilical cord to the North Sea because the majority of the North Sea is interconnected and passes all of its oil through the Forties pipeline system which arrives in Grangemouth. And then they separate, because when it arrives in this pipe — it's a big pipe about a meter in diameter, it's like Coca-Cola — it's a mixture of oil and gas. So they boil it all off and the gases move across to the chemical facility and the chemical facility turns those gases into chemical products in a cracker, and then the oil gets shipped off or consumed in other refineries in the UK. But the oil you can move around; the gas is much more difficult to move around. So you're dependent on that chemical facility. But it's in quite a tough place, Grangemouth, because it hasn't made any money for two or three years. It ought to make money, but the burden in Grangemouth for energy and carbon tax is 130 million pounds per year. So over 10 years, that's 1.3 billion. That's all the money you require to invest in the future and make it greener, more energy efficient, lower carbon footprint, all those things. But all that cash gets sucked out of the business and goes into government coffers.

Well, if you close Grangemouth, you close down 60 percent of the North Sea. INEOS have invested 500 million pounds of cash into Grangemouth in the last three years.

That's gone. There's a pretty significant exodus out of the North Sea because of the government policy on shutting down — really effectively shutting down the North Sea. The tax is now 80 percent and they're not giving any new licenses out. So that's a policy of closure of the North Sea really, which is a great shame because it's a fabulous asset for the UK. There's still lots of oil and gas left in the North Sea but everyone's running away. If it were me I would liberate the North Sea. I would do what America does and just simply apply corporation tax to people who are operating in the North Sea. It's very simple. Everybody understands it. That's what they do in America. So in America, if you produce oil and gas and you're profitable, you pay 35 percent corporation tax on it. It's nice and simple. You don't pay 80 percent, otherwise nobody would invest in the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm meeting with Nigel Farage before Christmas. He's asked for a meeting. And I've met with Kemi Badenoch. She's talked about it. So we have had a hearing. Yeah.

I don't know who she's spoken to. She's spoken to me, but she may have spoken to other people as well. But you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out really in my view. Energy is clearly highly correlated with economic growth. You can see that over the centuries. The UK started growing when we discovered coal. China discovers coal, America discovers oil and gas. You can see the kick up in the economies every time they've got competitive energy.

I haven't met him yet.

Well, if I look dispassionately at the UK, then I see the UK as high tax, high immigration, high crime, unfortunately. Now, if I look at why Trump won so convincingly in America, he won on tax and immigration really, or the economy and immigration. And unfortunately the current government for whatever reason isn't delivering on tax, immigration or crime. I mean, it's free crime in the UK. So if Farage is able to do that, I think most people would support him. If he could solve the economy — I mean taxes, the economy — there are two sides to taxes and the economy I think in the UK. One, you need growth and you have to think about what creates growth in the UK. And secondly, the solution to having an imbalance, which we have at the moment where the government is spending more money than it's earning, is not to keep putting taxes up. And it's a weird statistic, the top 1 percent of earners in the UK pays 30 percent of the income tax. And in America, the top 1 percent of earners pay 40 percent of the income tax. The top 1 percent of earners pays more tax than the lower 90 percent of earners. So you need to look after the 1 percent. That's where the growth is going to come from in the UK because they're the people who invest in the UK.