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 fanbase turned against Ratcliffe long ago and INEOS has been forced to slash its €250million (£209.5m; $280.1m) asking price.

INEOS, which declined to comment when approached by The Athletic, has given global consultancy firm Alvarez & Marsal the job of selling Lausanne-Sport and it has sent a five-page sales prospectus to potential investors. While this document is not intended for public consumption, The Athletic has seen it.

Titled “Project Striker”, it describes Lausanne-Sport as “an established top-flight contender” in a 12-team league with “only two historically dominant clubs”, FC Basel and Young Boys, “both of whom have recently struggled”. The implied selling point being the prospect of easier qualification for European football than in other leagues, although Lausanne-Sport have only managed it once under INEOS control.

In fact, the prospectus does not say much about past performance at all, so there is no mention of the team’s seven Swiss league titles or nine Swiss cup wins. Instead, there are references to “a unique infrastructure set-up” and “an asset-light model”, which is certainly one way of selling a club that rents its stadium and training ground from the local council.

There is also 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. It also cast an even darker shadow over head coach Michael Carrick’s future, only five months after he was given the job on a permanent basis. INEOS has already been forced to sack Erik ten Hag and Ruben Amorim for poor results.

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.