Profit from private equity's secret recipe

Selling out to private equity is rarely a route to riches, but buying into listed companies that copy private equity managers' tricks could well be. Merryn Somerset Webb unearths a play on this new trend.

It used to be that when you looked for an investment, you sought out a company you thought had more value in it than the share price reflected. Then you bought the shares and sat back and waited, sometimes for years, for the rest of market to see what you saw. Not any more.

These days, if the internet discussion boards and investment magazines are anything to go by, you look for companies that you think a private-equity company might think has more value in it than the share price reflects.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.