Born in 1952, Jim Ratcliffe grew up in a council house on Dunkerley Avenue in Failsworth, a small town between Manchester and Oldham.
He was sent to Beverley Grammar School when his family moved to Yorkshire.
As well as being football mad, he founded the school’s industrial society during sixth form.
He got a 2:1 degree in chemical engineering at the University of Birmingham.
On his first day, he was embarrassed to see he was nearly at the bottom of a list of 99 undergraduates ranked by their A-level results.
He worked for BP during a summer holiday after graduating and was offered a job. But he was fired after just three days because his boss had seen his medical report and wasn’t keen on him working there with mild eczema.
Ratcliffe went on to work as a trainee accountant at a pharmaceuticals company before moving to Esso then Courtaulds.
In 1992 he mortgaged his house to buy BP’s chemicals division for about £40 million.
He only started his first business weeks before his 40th birthday and founded Ineos aged 45 in 1998.
During the next 20 years he built his empire.
Ratcliffe married his first wife Amanda Townson in 1985. The pair, who have two sons, divorced in 1995. He has a daughter with his second wife Alicia.
Cutting a svelte figure, he does distance running and triathlons to keep himself in shape.
Source: The Sunday Times