Oldham-born billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe is Britain's richest man, the owner of Ligue 1 football club Nice and a childhood fan of Manchester United.
He has previously considered plans to purchase a club in the Premier League, including Chelsea, before turning his attention to French football in 2019.
Now based in Monaco, he also the backer of Ineos Grenadiers, the British professional cycling team formerly known as Team Sky and now named after his petrochemical company, that has so far won seven Tour de France titles.
Despite his links to United, Sir Jim became a Chelsea season ticket holder after moving to London. According to Forbes he is even richer than Blues owners Roman Abramovich with a personal net worth of £12.27bn.
He has previously spoken out about whether he would use his fortune to replace the Glazer family at Old Trafford.
When asked about buying Manchester United from the Glazer family, the 68-year-old distanced himself from the idea of buying his childhood club due to how poorly he believes they have been run since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson.
Speaking to The Times in 2019 following his purchase of Nice, Sir Jim said: "[Ineos] never wants to be the dumb money in town, never, never.
"They are in quite a big pickle as a business. They haven't got the manager selection right, haven't bought well. They have been the dumb money, which you see with players like Fred."
He added: "United have spent an immense amount since Ferguson left and been poor, to put it mildly. Shockingly poor, to be honest."
It wasn't the first time that he had spoken out about the problems at United as he saw them. In September 2018 he told The Telegraph: "It’s not getting any better [at United]. It’s gone from bad to catastrophic. Talk about a glass-half-empty."
Bob Ratcliffe, Sir Jim's brother and head of the Ineos football division, revealed that they had entered discussions with Chelsea in an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live in September 2019: "We spent quite a lot of time looking at Premier League clubs.
"We looked at the valuation of Premiership clubs and £5billion in revenues for the Premier League and top six clubs being valued at £2bn and upwards, and £450 [million] of net profit before tax.
"[It's] pretty difficult to rationalise purchases in the Premier League at this time for us and then, if you look below the top six, they're all £150m and above and you're going to write a cheque for £50m and get in the 'Everton Cup'.
"There was some early exchange [with Chelsea] but we were a significant way apart on valuations. The issue with Chelsea is its stadium. We are all getting older and it is a decade of your life to resolve that."
Sir Jim Ratcliffe was a co-founder of Inspec and made his money through shale gas, before creating the petrochemicals company Ineos in 1998.
He became the owner of the Swiss football club FC Lausanne-Sport in 2017 and was named the UK's richest man for the first time in the 2018 Sunday Times Rich List.
