Sir Jim Ratcliffe compared to Elon Musk for his cost-cutting measures
Since becoming Man United's minority owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has become well-known for his relentless cost-cutting drive. Just this week, his plans were reported to make at least 100 jobs redundant after laying off 250 employees last year.
Professor Rob Wilson, Director of Executive Education at University Campus of Football Business, argued that this style unites Ratcliffe with the world's richest man Elon Musk
"What we see generally, typified in US style ownership, is they look at revenue generation first and they look at cost control second," Professor Wilson said, as quoted by the Daily Mail.
"So go back to Manchester United, what did the Glazers do? They've tried to ramp up revenue as much as they possibly could.
"Actually what they did was they put an army of people behind that to make sure that you could sign your big deals with Snapdragon or Team Viewer before that and the big deal with Adidas and the Nike deal that came before that.
"So I think what we typically see with US ownership in the first instance is let's go after revenue, particularly in sponsorships and then we look at the other things thereafter.
"Elon Musk is slightly different because his acquisitions that we've seen, particularly at Twitter or X, is that he goes in after the cost-cutting because his investment methodology is more akin to what we would see with a British investor who looks at costs first."
