‘Greenwashing vs Sportswashing’, as Sky Sports put it, is a curious way to characterise the emerging £6 billion takeover tussle for Manchester United between industrialist Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani from Qatar. The latter might feel that his emirate – contrary to expectations, shall we say – has been not just sportswashed but drycleaned, pressed and showcased on the red carpet as host of last year’s World Cup, which ended without significant disruption by human rights or anti-corruption activists. Following that with membership of the rogues’ gallery of Premier League owners – recently joined by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia as majority owner of Newcastle United – is hardly likely to win higher moral standing.
As for Ratcliffe, his petrochemical conglomerate Ineos is anything but green and might by now have been fracking tracts of countryside not far from Manchester if Liz Truss had stayed in power. But it’s a private company and Ratcliffe is a private man who never tries to polish his public image. As for those who decry Ineos – including trade unionists that hate Ratcliffe for defeating them in the 2013 Grangemouth refinery dispute – they’re hardly likely to change their minds after seeing him take his seat in Old Trafford’s directors’ box.
So this is really a story of who blinks in the bidding and who else comes to the table – a US hedge fund, Elliott Investment Management, has also shown tentative interest. The sheikh’s fortune promises stability rather than spivvery and ample cash for new players. But Ratcliffe is a son of Manchester, an entrepreneur who has built one of the very few world-scale British-led businesses of the modern era and, I’m told, a decent, down-to-earth bloke behind a grumpy facade – so he gets my vote. And either will surely be a better steward than the incumbent Glazer family from New York and Florida, who will be remembered only for loading the club with debt and gouging it
for dividends.
Don’t rely on Big Oil
‘Big Oil: still profits before planet’ was the headline on a recent Financial Times feature detailing the retreat of major western energy companies from investment in renewable alternatives while profits run red-hot on their traditional fossil-fuel businesses because of war-driven price spikes.
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