The Merryn Somerset Webb interview: Jim Mellon's top picks and favourite sectors

Jim Mellon, author of The Top Ten Investments To Beat The Crunch, talks to Merryn Somerset Webb about his current investment passions and why he'd advise investors to take a keen interest in bioscience.

I meet Jim Mellon in Edinburgh at 11.45am. We haven't got long for a proper interview. Why? Because he has just come from some meetings, he has a lunch date, and he's expecting me to meet him again at 2.30 so we can see some shows.

Jim comes to Edinburgh every year for the festival and, unlike most adults, he actually does it properly. He books tickets well in advance, he meets endless friends for lunch and drinks and, in the name of keeping an open mind, he sees up to six shows a day. I've been in Edinburgh for three August weeks and I've seen a total of two shows by the time I meet Jim. One of those was put on by The Amazing Bubble Man ("the child in everyone loves bubbles") and the other was a lunchtime performance in the Aga shop. Last year when we met I hadn't managed to see any at all. It is a difference in focus and approach that pretty much explains why Jim owns a private jet and summers in Ibiza and I do not.

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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.