Jim Ratcliffe

Growing Ineos has been a lot of fun.

If you have spent your life building Ineos, and you find yourself in a crisis, you are going to do anything you can to save what you have been building.

The U.K. is one of the few places in the world that has final salary pensions.

If it's hemorrhaging cash, you've got to do something about it. You can't live with your head in the sand.

Germany has great skill levels, great infrastructure, high-quality plant. If you go to the U.K., we're very creative, and we've got the language, but energy costs are pretty much the most expensive in the Western world; pensions are pretty expensive, and the skills are significantly below those in Germany and the U.S.

Unions can play a valuable role in large organisations where it is difficult to talk to a thousand people. They can negotiate annual pay awards with management, represent grievance cases, and explain and advise on complicated changes in employment or pension law.

It would be nice if areas could be revitalised - like places in the U.S. such as Pittsburgh, for example, which have been transformed through shale. There you have shiny cars in a shiny city because of the development of shale in an old industrial heartland.

It is not necessary, nor appropriate, to sow dissent and misrepresent employees or constantly to threaten industrial action.

I'm very cheerful about coming back to the U.K. We increasingly found ourselves gravitating towards London. There was so much going on for our business, and we had grown substantially here.

Shale is one answer to the U.K.'s energy problem, and it has obviously worked extraordinarily well in America.

There's no substitute for seeing firsthand a well being drilled.

While unions did not play a part in my family life when I was being brought up, my early years were most certainly spent in a working-class community.