Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS, Manchester United’s minority owner, has put Swiss Super League side FC Lausanne-Sport up for sale. INEOS, whose global headquarters had been in the city between 2010 and 2016, bought the team in November 2017. At the time, it looked like more like an exercise in corporate social responsibility than the first step in the creation of a multi-sport empire that would eventually span cycling, F1, football, rugby union and sailing.
But that empire is now in retreat, with the decision to sell
Lausanne coming after abrupt exits from sponsorship deals with the All Blacks
(New Zealand, rugby union) and Tottenham Hotspur in 2025, a messy divorce from
America’s Cup partner Sir Ben Ainslie and the decision to put French club OGC
Nice on the market.
INEOS will be hoping for a much quicker exit from Lausanne
than their long, painful goodbye at Nice. The French side have won three of
their last four games to climb to mid-table in Ligue 1 but the club’s fan base
turned against Ratcliffe long ago and INEOS has been forced to slash its
€250million (£209.5m; $280.1m) asking price.
In the sales document there is no mention of the club’s
annual losses — which are likely to hit £5m this season and will only grow if
INEOS’s sponsorship cannot be replaced — or the fact that the team is bottom of
the division. Relegation this season would be the third demotion on INEOS’s
watch, although there have also been two promotions in that period.
In short, INEOS has not made much impact at Lausanne-Sport
at all, which is a common criticism of all of its sports investments, most
notably at Manchester United.
Ratcliffe agreed to buy 27.7 per cent of the Premier League
giant for £1.25billion in December 2023, with further cash injections taking
his stake up to nearly 29 per cent. But, in an unusual deal, the Glazer family,
the club’s majority owners, gave INEOS operational control at Old Trafford.
Initially, it looked like INEOS might be able to apply the
tried-and-tested formula that made it one of the world’s largest producers of
chemicals, plastics and energy to turning around United’s fortunes. Ratcliffe’s
money was used to upgrade the training ground, costs and headcount were
slashed, reviews conducted and there was much talk of “best in class”
appointments, on and off the pitch.
But Sunday’s abject home defeat by Bournemouth leaves the
team in 16th place in the league, on seven points after eight games, having
lost two of three games in the Champions League and already exited the Carabao
Cup.
The problems at the club clearly go deeper than whoever is
in the dugout, though, with criticism of INEOS mounting. First, for its failure
to deliver on its talk of returning United to their former glories, but also
for propping up the deeply unpopular Glazer regime.
The timing for Ratcliffe, however, could not be worse, as
INEOS is currently battling against a blizzard of economic headwinds from
rising energy costs in Europe, to import tariffs in the United States, to
misfiring footballers in England. The conglomerate’s total debts have recently
hit £18bn.
The Monaco-based businessman has also come under increasing
media scrutiny after a series of controversial comments about Brexit, European
energy policies, immigration and British attitudes to wealth.
Selling Lausanne-Sport will make little difference to his
company’s finances — INEOS is a £37bn business that employs more than 23,000
people in 26 countries — but it does provide further evidence of the end of his
multi-sport ambitions and a renewed focus on core assets. As well as trying to
his various sporting disposals and exits, INEOS has also recently sold fashion
label Belstaff and its household cleaning products brand.
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