I’m still cross with Anthony Bolton

The China Special Situations fund, managed by hot-shot fund manager Anthony Bolton, is proof that in the fund-management industry, some bad habits die hard. Merryn Somerset Webb explains.

Back in 2010, Fidelity launched its China Special Situations investment trust with Anthony Bolton at the helm. Anyone who was a MoneyWeek reader at the time will remember how cross the launch made us.

We thought it was an irresponsible time to be encouraging small investors to pile into China. We were horrified by the way the fund was marketed. Very few investment trusts ever paid commission to financial advisers even back in the days when they were allowed to. This one did.

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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.