Jim Ratcliffe quotes:

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.

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

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

I think the U.K. would be perfectly successful as a standalone country, part of the European marketplace like Norway and Switzerland but without the expensive E.U. bureaucracy.

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.

You can't have an energy policy that means you can only have a bath when the wind blows.

Unions do have a proper role in negotiating for employees and advising employees, but they have to engage with the employer.

Brussels has become inefficient and very bureaucratic, which makes it slow to do things. The concept of the United States of Europe will never work.

Do your analysis of energy costs. Either it comes from windmills and solar or things like nuclear and shale gas. You have to think about how you provide competitive energy for U.K. Ltd.

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.

America's got quite reasonable tax rates from an employee point of view.

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

In America, if you are a landowner, you own the minerals vertically underneath your plot. So if there is shale, you get a share.

Ineos is a friendly organisation. Very few people leave. It's collegiate. There's not much politics, and we like decent people. We don't like arrogance or bullies.

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

Towards the end of 2005, Ineos acquired Innovene, the petrochemicals arm of BP, for $9 billion. It quadrupled the size of Ineos overnight and brought with it some of the world's largest industrial sites.

We believe Ineos is a refreshing place to work. We believe strongly in employee share ownership.

If you go to the U.S., you've got a huge market, cheap energy, good skills, and pensions are a sensible cost.