Speaker 1: Hi Francine, Hi Dave. For a week you have had,
Speaker 1: I think, haven't you? Well, we've all had I feel like,
Speaker 1: what a month we just keep on talking about banks.
Speaker 1: Zoey Shnevis, who used to be our bureau chief in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: said it best, The Swiss are boring until they're not,
Speaker 1: until they're really not. Right now, front page news everywhere,
Speaker 1: and you have been zooming around and covering this story.
Speaker 1: And we could have tried to get someone from Switzer
Speaker 1: on this, but actually, who do we get in the
Speaker 1: end is someone we've been trying to get on this
Speaker 1: podcast since we started last year, I think. And it's
Speaker 1: like the perfect moment to have. I think Jim O'Neill,
Speaker 1: didn't you. Yeah, So when we started talking about the
Speaker 1: podcast about eight months ago, you and I Dave, we're
Speaker 1: talking about, Okay, who's the ideal economist who usually doesn't
Speaker 1: pull any punches, talks freely. And of course it was
Speaker 1: Jim O'Neil, former Gorman Sax economist who coined the acronym
Speaker 1: brick exactly. And you know he was right at the
Speaker 1: centry things in the last in the big financial crisis
Speaker 1: of two thousand and eight. He has been a policy advisor,
Speaker 1: has been in the government. Of course he's a Manchester
Speaker 1: Uniceed deal expert. All these things are sort of converging
Speaker 1: at the moment. So finally he said yes, that he
Speaker 1: had come in and talk to us. I'm Francie Laquas
Speaker 1: and I'm David Merritt. This is In the City, Bloomberg's podcast,
Speaker 1: connecting you to the conversations at the heart of the
Speaker 1: City of London, and this week we speak with former
Speaker 1: Conservative minister and Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill. Jim O'Neill,
Speaker 1: the world famous economist who coined bricks Now the House
Speaker 1: of Lords? Is that me who ex Treasury minister was
Speaker 1: what else do you have on your TV? I'm the
Speaker 1: chair of Northern Guitztone, which is a actually probably the
Speaker 1: most fun thing I currently do, which is relatively new,
Speaker 1: and to do that invests in startups coming out of
Speaker 1: Northern universities. Do you miss being in banking? No, not
Speaker 1: in the slightest, particularly now right, I mean the sort
Speaker 1: of analytical bit about how the hell do we get
Speaker 1: out of this situation? I'd enjoy, in fact one of
Speaker 1: the great things about my time and it is because
Speaker 1: there were so many of those events. I often say
Speaker 1: one of the sort of few things I think I
Speaker 1: learned is how individuals. I think it's probably true bilder
Speaker 1: in life, but certainly in that world, how individuals responded
Speaker 1: during a crisis, and how the leadership of an institution
Speaker 1: responded would be the mark of how they did in
Speaker 1: the next era. In my view, I think it's true
Speaker 1: as certainly the best investors, but it's probably true of
Speaker 1: an organization as well. What do you mean, Jim, So
Speaker 1: if they accessed public money then they're in a better
Speaker 1: shape now or I mean it more in sort of
Speaker 1: culture and leadership and sort of thoughtfulness about how you respond,
Speaker 1: and I guess below it what are we in? I
Speaker 1: mean is you know crises will always happen despite the
Speaker 1: best intentions of policymakers, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I think there were consequence of the at one end
Speaker 1: greed and at the other end fear and whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: And it's just human nature. But we all have these
Speaker 1: strange minds where we forget things, so nobody ever really
Speaker 1: thinks about that, although it's the reality. Then a crisis
Speaker 1: happens and most people kind of panic a bit. Typically
Speaker 1: people aren't being through them before and frequently don't make
Speaker 1: rational decisions about, you know, what's the right thing to
Speaker 1: do and what's going to happen. So ubs have had
Speaker 1: to bring back therefore Joe Motty, right, I saw that
Speaker 1: when I was walking in So if the all phone
Speaker 1: rang somebody saying we need would you would you? Would
Speaker 1: you take up the mental again? No, I have too
Speaker 1: much fun doing things I do. It's actually ten years
Speaker 1: ago in a pullet when I left Gorman, I promised
Speaker 1: myself that that I was leaving because it was a
Speaker 1: nice time to leave for me, and nobody really expects
Speaker 1: me to leave. And I sort of dreamt up this mantra,
Speaker 1: if it can't be better, it's got to be different
Speaker 1: about what I'd do, and I've kind of stuck to it. Really,
Speaker 1: But how would you fix banks right now? What's going
Speaker 1: on in the banking system right now? I mean to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm obviously I'm not in at twenty four seven
Speaker 1: like I used to be. But for my forty thousand
Speaker 1: feet I think it's revealed. One thing again that we
Speaker 1: always know is that whenever interest rates our eyes sharply,
Speaker 1: the week get found out. It is quite simple and
Speaker 1: quite remarkable how that theme just does repeat what's the
Speaker 1: great phrase history and never repeats itself, but it rhymes.
Speaker 1: I mean, in that instance it is I'm really reminded
Speaker 1: of my days at SBC before I went to government.
Speaker 1: We're in ninety four, the gang I was with him,
Speaker 1: just the research guys, but also some of the traders there.
Speaker 1: We were very confident that FED was going to start
Speaker 1: raising rights, and we thought we were such geniuses and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, blah blah, and we got completely hosed
Speaker 1: because of the broader things with the bank's exposure to
Speaker 1: your bonds it was at the time. And it's just
Speaker 1: so difficult when that's happening, and that's at the core
Speaker 1: of this. And then but secondly, it's just so difficult
Speaker 1: for the regulators to treat every financial entity with the
Speaker 1: right approach. I think what seems to famous last words
Speaker 1: seems to be robust, which as a consequence of last time,
Speaker 1: is what the broadly put in place for big banks
Speaker 1: seems to be robust enough. But what they made a
Speaker 1: huge error on and for what I vaguely read, I
Speaker 1: think the Silicon Valley Bank guys played a bit of
Speaker 1: a naughty game. Is they deliberately kept their equity size
Speaker 1: below the number of where they become subjects a full
Speaker 1: serious regulatory focus. And that's obviously an hour of the regulators.
Speaker 1: So I think I'm assuming all of that will get changed.
Speaker 1: I think the Credit Swiss thing is slightly unique because
Speaker 1: obviously that is one of the thirty banks that was
Speaker 1: supposedly too big to fail, and it had the regulatory
Speaker 1: net and that, But I don't know. I mean, another
Speaker 1: oddity about this, which is a contrast to eight eight,
Speaker 1: is that because short rates are so high on government
Speaker 1: debt in the US and the UK, you know, for
Speaker 1: any rational person that has a bit of cash exposed
Speaker 1: in the bank that they don't need, you can basically
Speaker 1: get the same rate of return in two years or
Speaker 1: less government money. So what is the incentive right now
Speaker 1: to do anything other than put it in a government
Speaker 1: And that means that particularly for banks that aren't so
Speaker 1: strong in terms of deposit base, it's quite a lot
Speaker 1: of them are probably under the cosh as we speak.
Speaker 1: So we're going to see more in trouble or is
Speaker 1: this now contained? I mean, we have seen this mega
Speaker 1: deal in Switzerland try to contain the bleeding of the
Speaker 1: system there but an SEB obviously has been resolved. But then,
Speaker 1: I mean, the interest rate situation is what it is, right,
Speaker 1: So is there more to come? You know? I think
Speaker 1: if you if you go back over the whole of
Speaker 1: my career, you know, I don't. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: a magic solution. Monetary policy can't solve everything. It's a
Speaker 1: blunt instrument in that sense. And what is the prime
Speaker 1: job of the central banks? We've lived at for much
Speaker 1: of our generation, thinking it's to fight inflation, but every
Speaker 1: time there's a huge financial crisis, actually what their prime
Speaker 1: job is to ensure financial stability. And I think of
Speaker 1: what we've seen from them in the past three weeks,
Speaker 1: I think is actually pretty impressive in terms of the
Speaker 1: speed which they be outside, which of course is driven
Speaker 1: by what happened in OA, and it's very impressive. And
Speaker 1: I think that tells you that in the event of
Speaker 1: some further big problems that especially starts to threaten some
Speaker 1: of the big guys, you know, there'll be more hints
Speaker 1: of border deposit support that Janet Yellen clearly flirted with
Speaker 1: and then she backed off. But the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: because of the tricky to measure but probably important mechanism
Speaker 1: from those weekend banks that then curtail the lending. This
Speaker 1: might start doing some of the Fed's job and the
Speaker 1: Bank of England's job, another central banks job for them, right,
Speaker 1: so it stops the need for other eight acts. Yes, ortainly,
Speaker 1: if there's a credit crisis. When you look at our
Speaker 1: mobile apps, does it encourage bank runs? We had the
Speaker 1: City Group chief executives saying like, look, maybe regulation needs
Speaker 1: to look at this. So you have a lot of
Speaker 1: online fakes. We had the you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you the pope with a big puffer jacket that
Speaker 1: was a fake, you head. There's so much fakes and
Speaker 1: there's so much mobile app I think this is a
Speaker 1: perfect concoction. I think mobile phones have got a lot
Speaker 1: to answer for right for banks more broadly, so I'm
Speaker 1: still waiting for somebody to tell me why Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter or serve any useful purpose to society and more,
Speaker 1: you know more, if you look at it from a
Speaker 1: true macroeconomics perspective, We've we've had this staggering and I'm
Speaker 1: on the damn thing all day long as well. By
Speaker 1: the way, and we've had this stagging rise of this
Speaker 1: during a collapse of productivity in the Western world. And
Speaker 1: I think it's a quite relevant issue to focus on
Speaker 1: about the rise of AI, because what is the point
Speaker 1: of all these things? If they don't boost productiviously, why
Speaker 1: are they useful things for society? Please allowed banks to
Speaker 1: have runs in false circumstances, then clearly it's not. It
Speaker 1: also runs a record. See people to queue around the block,
Speaker 1: you have to get your place in the queue. Right
Speaker 1: in England it was a day, yeah, exactly, which we're
Speaker 1: very peace today, but so so. And you mentioned the
Speaker 1: speed of the regulators. But if everyone can pull their
Speaker 1: cash out in hours, you know, what can the regulators
Speaker 1: do to sort of catch That adds to the problems
Speaker 1: facing them. I mean, it's of course always so easy
Speaker 1: for people to criticize regulators, but that's one of the
Speaker 1: core things as to why it's so hard for them,
Speaker 1: because you know, quite rightly they've always got them all
Speaker 1: has an issue at the back of the minds. And
Speaker 1: if they certainly wouldn't have supported Silicon Bank as quickly
Speaker 1: as they did, that could have been a catastrophe for
Speaker 1: you know, normal human beings. Never mind all of us
Speaker 1: closeted people who have been in the world of finance.
Speaker 1: And in Britain there was some praise for the government
Speaker 1: about how they responded on the on the SVB situation.
Speaker 1: Over the weekend. They they brokered the deal with HSBC,
Speaker 1: and every one on Monday morning thought, look, Britain's regulators
Speaker 1: are working quite well. It's all quite neat. Is that
Speaker 1: something you listen? I managed people I know in the
Speaker 1: policy world myself saying exactly that I thought, And you
Speaker 1: know this has not been I'm a cross bencher by
Speaker 1: the way, so I'm at liberty to critical neutrals, so
Speaker 1: I can criticize or compliment anybody on the political side,
Speaker 1: and this government or this colum of government has not
Speaker 1: been that difficult to criticize in the past few years.
Speaker 1: But on this I thought that it was very impressive policy.
Speaker 1: The speed in which they reacted was very impressive, and
Speaker 1: I think they kind of you know, HSBC, it's probably
Speaker 1: a very very difficult thing to not do given the
Speaker 1: price to god it form. But is this the government
Speaker 1: or resist some woods at the Bank of England with
Speaker 1: Andrew Bailey the regulator. I think I think it's almost
Speaker 1: definitely all of them, and I think it's a flat
Speaker 1: it's a to doncal reflection of the character of this
Speaker 1: Prime Minister and that in that sense, I think we
Speaker 1: have a couple of adults in the room for the
Speaker 1: first time in a few years. You know, they might
Speaker 1: not be the most exciting personalities to lead a country
Speaker 1: in our chancellor as well, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: reflection of how they are as thinkers, because they wouldn't
Speaker 1: particularly wish because you know it was in finance, so
Speaker 1: it knows straight away. But I do something pretty sharp,
Speaker 1: but I think the Bank of England guys played a
Speaker 1: big welty And as you said, Jim, it's been years,
Speaker 1: hasn't it, since it's been possible or since I've heard
Speaker 1: people you know in your position experience for lavishing praise
Speaker 1: on the British government doesn't become so easy these days,
Speaker 1: sort of through clenched teeth. So so are you a
Speaker 1: bit more optimistic then for the reputation of Britain or
Speaker 1: at the City of London in general with this administration.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a subjective topic to talk about
Speaker 1: and so easy for the kind of crazy decisions this
Speaker 1: country has made in recent years to think that you know,
Speaker 1: the city's in trouble, but I'm sure from you and
Speaker 1: I over the years talks about this, we have some
Speaker 1: really basic, forty thousand feet unique advantages that are hard
Speaker 1: to get rid of. And because of the sheer history
Speaker 1: of financial markets and therefore the depth of what might
Speaker 1: loosely be called the talent pool, and our regulatory system
Speaker 1: and our legal system, it's pretty hard for anybody else
Speaker 1: in this time zone to get even close to the
Speaker 1: role that London can play in global finance. But you
Speaker 1: know we're we're chipping away at the edges, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: So what should the government do? And what if you
Speaker 1: had to give a report card to this government and regulators,
Speaker 1: what would it be Well on a tangential close tangent
Speaker 1: part of it. I am partly involved in aspects of
Speaker 1: this now because I was asked by Rachel Reeves to
Speaker 1: lead this so called Startup Review into the future of
Speaker 1: small businesses and new startups becoming successful, because it's a
Speaker 1: huge seeming dilemma in this country that we have all
Speaker 1: these brilliant universities and lots of great ideas, but we
Speaker 1: fail to develop seemingly too many lasting successful businesses out
Speaker 1: of them in the UK and so that was quite
Speaker 1: fun doing that. And I'm a big fan of those
Speaker 1: aspects of the so called Edinburgh reforms and they need
Speaker 1: to go further. It is bizarre how many assets are
Speaker 1: big pension fund and insurance companies hold and how little
Speaker 1: they invest in domestic risk assets. And we made a
Speaker 1: number of proposals which I think under a different government
Speaker 1: would be adopted. But as is the nature of parts
Speaker 1: of the Odd Way how politics seems to be conducted here,
Speaker 1: the incumbent government is also on the case about many
Speaker 1: of those same ideas. Now, whether it's because they thought
Speaker 1: of them themselves or they're like, as they've done with
Speaker 1: other things, just pinch what the opposition is saying. But
Speaker 1: so I think there's quite a lot of momentum to
Speaker 1: use the freedoms away from being in the EU, and
Speaker 1: to play around with solvency too, to allow, if not force,
Speaker 1: some more long term domestic investment, whether it be an
Speaker 1: infrastructure or scale ups, or to empower the British business.
Speaker 1: But that would be protectionism. Is that protectionism? If you
Speaker 1: force investment domestically, call it what you want. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of what goes on in many parts of
Speaker 1: the world, and the US has always, from my experience,
Speaker 1: being so brilliant at this as being the leader of
Speaker 1: free markets, but being pretty clever subsidizing a lot of
Speaker 1: its technology businesses through homeland security for example, or through
Speaker 1: the defense spending. I mean, would Google and others have
Speaker 1: actually ever been what they are if it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been for support from the US early government, early on.
Speaker 1: And to be honest, and I think it is necessary
Speaker 1: because if you look, you know, and again I spend
Speaker 1: lots of time on this because of all the stuff
Speaker 1: I'm doing around the North. But more broadly, if you
Speaker 1: look at Britain's biggest problem, which is low productivity and
Speaker 1: with it extremely persistently weak investment spending, we've got to
Speaker 1: do something about boosting investment spending, both from the governments
Speaker 1: itself but also on the incensives for the private sector.
Speaker 1: It does entail if you do that, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: some regulators now because of the banking issue, will try
Speaker 1: to It may raise fresh risk about the mark to
Speaker 1: market issues of how you know, because it's long term
Speaker 1: investing in risk assets is risky, but no risk, no return.
Speaker 1: How can you persuade the big pots money to invest
Speaker 1: or will take on more risk that sit in the
Speaker 1: city of London. I mean, you know, there's solvency two
Speaker 1: is one angle of this, of course, but how can
Speaker 1: we create more of an investment in risk culture in
Speaker 1: the city. I spend endless time on this, and it
Speaker 1: was it's the core feature of the Startup Review. But
Speaker 1: because of proposed and because the psychology of businesses will
Speaker 1: labor might win. So a lot of big business people,
Speaker 1: especially risk takers in the space, have been in touch
Speaker 1: with me, and so I'm thinking I'm spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time on this every week, and I think the
Speaker 1: real answer is because of the culture we have and
Speaker 1: how long some of these things have been going wrong.
Speaker 1: It's probably not that easy, you know. For the big,
Speaker 1: big institutional investment managers, particularly ones of a somewhat younger
Speaker 1: generation than me, they've been brought in a culture where dividend,
Speaker 1: dividend yields and guilts is all that they need to do.
Speaker 1: We've got to change the risk reward culture on that,
Speaker 1: and it will involve some possible cost, because who the
Speaker 1: hell is going to buy all these guilts if they're
Speaker 1: not buying as many, but we need to change the
Speaker 1: way their incentives work. So one way links to solvency too,
Speaker 1: which I think is going to happen, is you change
Speaker 1: the rule in which they account for long term liabilities
Speaker 1: to have it more sensitive to anything other than guilt yields,
Speaker 1: because when you're real it's more of the US model.
Speaker 1: I think it's more like the US model because when
Speaker 1: you certainly think back to it, and following the mad
Speaker 1: few weeks of Liz Trusts, you know, from my advantage
Speaker 1: point that disaster ended up being as bad as it
Speaker 1: was because we discovered that a large section of that
Speaker 1: crowd basically for the best part of a decade being
Speaker 1: taking hugely leveraged bets on guilts. And is that the
Speaker 1: right thing for our long term institutions to do? And
Speaker 1: I think the answer is no. We need people to
Speaker 1: be investing in things that will boost the country's long
Speaker 1: term growth performance and whether that including, by the way,
Speaker 1: more of them holding publicly quoted equities listed in the UK,
Speaker 1: because that's partly why nobody ever listed in the UK anymore,
Speaker 1: because there's no domestic investors and it becomes a bit
Speaker 1: of a vicious circle. In the days of when Maggie
Speaker 1: was first around, and we began to privatize some the
Speaker 1: endless state entities of the time before your time, I
Speaker 1: might suggest many many decades only the beginning of mine.
Speaker 1: It became known as cool sid where you would basically
Speaker 1: have a huge campaign aimed at, you know, anybody in
Speaker 1: the country about how good it was for the country
Speaker 1: for them to buy shares in BP or BP so
Speaker 1: one thing you could do in that you could have
Speaker 1: you know, on the I don't know what the pension
Speaker 1: schemes are here, but on many of these days you
Speaker 1: asked to you want to invest in? Do you want
Speaker 1: your pension to go into equity or dividend or you
Speaker 1: can add two more. You say, these are all ideas.
Speaker 1: Will they push it through? I mean, Dave and I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in saying, look, there's also
Speaker 1: the cost of living crisis. The government wants to be
Speaker 1: reelected like this could be low hanging fruit, but will
Speaker 1: they actually get it done if they have so much
Speaker 1: else to worry about. It seems to me that both
Speaker 1: mainstream political parties are working quite seriously on this stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, the real answer to the cyclical, intense
Speaker 1: challenges with guys, we need to be able to grow
Speaker 1: boost the growth rate in a non inflationary way. But
Speaker 1: if you just put sticking plaster on solving the cost
Speaker 1: of living crisis in the way that generally is trying
Speaker 1: to be done, all that means is when you try
Speaker 1: and boost the growth rate again, you're going to go
Speaker 1: straight back into it. So you've got to be able
Speaker 1: to boost the capacity of the country to grow without
Speaker 1: generating inflation. And again it goes back to adults being
Speaker 1: in the room. If I look at some of the
Speaker 1: things they said in the budget, it's probably the most
Speaker 1: serious supply side boosting budget I've seen, certainly since the
Speaker 1: days of Osborne, and maybe a bit sorry George, maybe
Speaker 1: even a bit before, you know, on things to do
Speaker 1: again that I'm heavily involved in, on devolution and giving
Speaker 1: more powers to English regions, certainly the most serious stuff
Speaker 1: we've since since Osborne. You know, we might be just
Speaker 1: a year away from an election, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: you feel that the other side of the aisle and
Speaker 1: Rachel Reeves they're not going to be radically different in
Speaker 1: their approach to this. I mean, I think that's part
Speaker 1: of the intriguing thing here. If you you did one
Speaker 1: of those games where you sort of dubbed Rachel's voice
Speaker 1: with somebody else's in the Tory side and otherwise with
Speaker 1: the current chancellor, would you know the difference on a
Speaker 1: number of issues. Well, of course you would, because you're
Speaker 1: so savvy. But I think that I think in that sense,
Speaker 1: maybe we're coming a little bit about like towards the
Speaker 1: early nineces, and maybe there's a hint of board of things.
Speaker 1: You can see it a bit in other countries that
Speaker 1: some of the sort of lunatic fringe people of the
Speaker 1: past decade don't seem to be quite in the middle
Speaker 1: of the game anymore. But and so in that sense,
Speaker 1: I kind of quite welcome it. But you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I've got to know the opposition leaders pretty well and
Speaker 1: I think they're quite credible. People have united yet, oh god,
Speaker 1: I knew? And for how married? What we want to ask?
Speaker 1: What do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about?
Speaker 1: Who's united? Yeah? What? What? I don't get about the
Speaker 1: core issue of that. So many people don't seem to
Speaker 1: understand that one billion pounds it's like an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of money. There's you know, never mind four or five.
Speaker 1: You know, so there is literally very as as this
Speaker 1: rather public That's a fascinating part of it. I've never
Speaker 1: come across a publicly quoted company having such such this
Speaker 1: game going on via in this get sports media to
Speaker 1: effectively try and boost the value of the asset. There
Speaker 1: must be some pretty fine issues about the whether the
Speaker 1: New York Stock Exchange should be having a look at that,
Speaker 1: because it's it's literally three months of this madness. But
Speaker 1: what it's revealed that there's only two entities for what
Speaker 1: I can see that how do I put it? Seem
Speaker 1: to think it is possible for them to afford to
Speaker 1: buy this thing because it's a huge amount of money
Speaker 1: that they seem to be asking for. Can a football
Speaker 1: ever be worth that match five? Imp? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think early on when I was maybe last on with
Speaker 1: Francie annoyingly dragged some of this out of me. Then
Speaker 1: just play the tape on that. I don't think that
Speaker 1: the next twenty years for the commercialization of football is
Speaker 1: going to be anything like the last twenty. So anybody
Speaker 1: that's spending that kind of money on the basis that
Speaker 1: they're going to get every turn on it probably needs
Speaker 1: to go and visit their GP unless the super League
Speaker 1: is back, but that wouldn't do it. But that's not
Speaker 1: that's not enough that would help. But I think unless
Speaker 1: the Super League idea is proposed in a very different
Speaker 1: way and in particular to have relegation and promote promotion,
Speaker 1: there's no way famous last words, there's no way that
Speaker 1: the fans and for that reason, the regulators would allow
Speaker 1: him to do it in the foreseeable future. But is
Speaker 1: this all because of Chelsea? I think the United thing
Speaker 1: is United is unique again, going back to my deep,
Speaker 1: deep obsession with that and my own history. It's somebody
Speaker 1: that used to travel around the world as much as
Speaker 1: I did. You know, as soon as I breathe Manchester
Speaker 1: And unless it was Japan where the cab drivers can't
Speaker 1: speak English or seem to preterm, they can't. They can't
Speaker 1: everywhere else, literally, Manchester United anywhere anywhere it is. It
Speaker 1: is a staggering, staggering brand. So United is quite unique.
Speaker 1: But just you know, it's not impossible that the Chelsea
Speaker 1: guys put in peak football price because they paid a
Speaker 1: crazy price for it, and look at the mess that's
Speaker 1: going on there. According to my info, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: single buyer trying to get hold of Liverpool because it's
Speaker 1: a huge amount of money, and so you're really talking
Speaker 1: at somebody that has some sort of philanthropic type purpose.
Speaker 1: But even you know what person is going to devote
Speaker 1: billions of pounds to that unless it's part of some
Speaker 1: border strategy they've got. Hence why there's only two, although
Speaker 1: the sellers seem to keep trying to create the idea
Speaker 1: that there's another six that nobody just knows about yet, which,
Speaker 1: come on, who do you think it'll go to get
Speaker 1: in trouble? I don't know. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't don't I don't know what I really hope,
Speaker 1: and they both know this because I chat with them.
Speaker 1: I hope if the owners actually sell it, I hope
Speaker 1: the new owners treat it as the brand that it is,
Speaker 1: but have a real purpose and bring a connection back
Speaker 1: to where it's from and actually link it into Manchester's
Speaker 1: development and Manchester's role in the Northern Powerhouse, et etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Because if they don't, whoever buys it, they will find
Speaker 1: out a few months later that they might not be
Speaker 1: the most popular guys in the planet either, although of
Speaker 1: course the fans right now, desperate for it to be
Speaker 1: anybody other than the Corent guys. Oil. Thank you so much, pleasure,
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for listening to this week's in the City.
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Speaker 1: Additional editing was by Blake Maple's Special thanks to Jim O'Neil.