How Middlesbrough FC's owner Steve Gibson created a net worth of £640m | OneFootball

Gibson has been in charge at the Riverside Stadium since 1994, and has ruled over some of Middlesbrough's finest hours.

Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson is one of the most well-respected and admired owners in English football, having guided his boyhood club away from the brink of extinction, to 14 years of Premier League football and a European Cup final.

Gibson, a lifelong Middlesbrough fan, first joined the club's board as a 26-year-old in 1986, becoming Boro's youngest ever director in the process.

Desperate not to see his club cease to exist, he played a leading role in saving Middlesbrough at the last minute, fronting a consortium that would guide the club out of its darkest hour and into a far brighter future.

Still as passionate about Boro as ever in 2024, Gibson has made a string of shrewd decisions in recent years which have placed the club in a strong position to seriously challenge for a return to the Premier League this season, and indeed going forward if it's not to be this year.

Football clubs being owned by a supporter of that team are becoming an ever-rarer sight towards the top of the English footballing pyramid, so how did the 66-year-old come to amass a reported net worth of £640m?

Football League World investigates...

Gibson is the founder of a global haulage company

Gibson is the founder of the international haulage company Bulkhaul Limited, which he set up in 1981 by borrowing £1,000 of his father's money.

Since then, the company has grown into a worldwide transporter of bulk liquids, powders and gases for chemical companies, but the business still retains its central operating base on Teesside.

As per Bulkhaul's website, the company operates in over 150 countries, and possesses a fleet of over 23,000 deep sea liquid isotanks, making them one of the world's largest independent operators and a market leader in global tank transportation.

Gibson is also the majority owner (75% stake) of the Gibson O'Neill Company Ltd alongside fellow businessman Michael O'Neill. The company's assets include Bulkhaul, Middlesbrough FC, and Rockliffe Hall Hotel respectively, which is on the grounds of Middlesbrough's training complex.

As of 2023, the holding company had an estimated net worth of £188.5m according to CompanyCheck, rising from £148.4m in 2022.

Therefore, it looks as though Middlesbrough Football Club and its owner are in the strongest financial position they've been in for some time, evidenced by their ability to reject big-money offers for their star players, such as Ipswich Town's £20m bid for Emmanuel Latte Lath.

Gibson's backing has been pivotal to Boro's successes in the 21st century

For 'just a small town in Europe' - as Middlesbrough fans have self-depricatingly sang since their European adventures of the mid-2000s -, Boro have been punching above their weight for almost the entire duration of Gibson's Riverside reign.

But so much of that punching power has come from the man himself. It was Gibson's back-to-back shrewd managerial appointments of Bryan Robson in 1991, and Steve McClaren in 2001 that delivered some of the greatest teams and players in Boro's history.

It was Gibson who put his hands in his pocket to bring some of the biggest stars in world football to Teesside. Juninho, Ravanelli, Viduka, Mendieta, Hasselbaink and many more; Middlesbrough fans have seen some true greats don their club's colours.

Despite Boro being resigned to the Championship in more recent times, with head of football Kieran Scott and head coach Michael Carrick at the helm, optimism is rife on Teesside that a return to the glory days during the early years of Gibson's tenure may not be a far-fetched dream after all.

With the Middlesbrough chairman showing no signs of wavering in his appetite for running the football club and achieving success, he looks set to guide Boro into what supporters will hope is a highly exciting future ahead.