Ratcliffe seeks out-of-court settlement in £180m Ineos dispute with Sir Ben Ainslie

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is seeking an out-of-court settlement in a £180million legal dispute with four-time Olympic champion Sir Ben Ainslie, after the two men’s working relationship collapsed in January last year following their joint campaigns at the America’s Cup.

Ineos launched High Court proceedings against Ainslie’s Athena Racing team in March over ownership of a racing yacht the company claims to have spent £180million developing. The pair had collaborated on two America’s Cup campaigns — in Auckland in 2021 and Barcelona in 2024 — with Ratcliffe having committed to a third before the partnership broke down.

Speaking in Naples this weekend, Ainslie indicated both sides are now motivated to avoid a prolonged court battle. “A lot of water has flowed under the bridge over the last 18 months,” he told The Telegraph. “We had a mutual desire to win the America’s Cup, and I’m confident we’ll be able to find a way to resolve this before it goes to court.”

The urgency to settle is partly driven by the Commercial Court’s scheduling constraints. The earliest available slots for hearings expected to run longer than a week are from 15 November 2027 — four months after the conclusion of next year’s America’s Cup.

Ainslie’s defence filings make serious allegations about the manner in which Ratcliffe’s team pursued the dispute. The documents allege that Ineos Sport chairman Rob Nevin told Ainslie that Ratcliffe demanded “all of [the team’s] assets and intellectual property” be transferred to him in exchange for continued backing, and warned: “We have a phrase at Ineos: ‘scorched earth’. It means that if you don’t give Jim what he wants, he will burn your house down.”

Ineos did not dispute that the phrase was used, but contested its interpretation. In submitted court documents, the company stated: “It is admitted that Mr Nevin indicated that Sir Jim would not back down and in that context referred to ‘scorched earth’. But it is denied that these comments would reasonably have been understood by Sir Ben as a ‘threat’ of anything other than the claimant enforcing its legal rights to the fullest extent possible. Mr Nevin’s words were intended to be, and would reasonably have been understood to be, used in a figurative rather than a literal sense.”

Ineos chief executive Jean-Claude Blanc is also alleged to have confronted Ainslie alongside Nevin, a claim their legal representatives did not dispute.