United the world’s biggest ‘content play’ says O’Neill

ECONOMIST and Manchester United fan Jim O’Neill believes the club is the biggest emerging markets “content play” in the world.

Speaking at Pro Manchester’s Manchester Business Conference on Friday, Mr O’Neill, discussed the need for UK firms to increase exports to parts of the world outside Europe.

He said: “The challenge for the UK and others is to be producing stuff that these guys want to buy.

“Manchester United is the biggest BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India and China] content play in the world. What we need is lots more versions of that across lots of different industries.”

He said Germany will be exporting twice as much to China by 2020 as it will do to France. “We’ve got to export more goods and services. Later this decade the BRIC countries will be a lot more important to us. It’s right to have some fresh questions as to whether the European Union is as important to our future as we once thought.

“All these aspiring wealthy people want to buy things and if you can sell to them you will have a prosperous future.”

The Manchester-born chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management spoke about the power of the Chinese economy which is worth around $8 trillion dollars, about half the size of the US.

He said China and India were often compared to each other, but this was misguided as India’s economy is worth around $2 trillion, equal to the amount of Chinese growth in recent years.

“In two years China has created more than another India. To make this comparison is as unfair as creating a comparison between City and United,” he said.

Mr O’Neill, who coined the phrase BRICs, also joked: “These guys meet as a club but they never asked for my approval before they decided to do so.”

He is retiring from Goldman Sachs in the summer and was asked if he would consider an advisory role in politics. “I can’t imagine why anyone would ever offer me one… I don’t understand what drives politicians, it’s a bit wierd. But I have a strong sense of philanthropy so I would think of it as a form of philanthropy.”