A message to the financial industry: be trustworthy

A lack of transparency is destroying the relationship between the financial services industry and its clients, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Brace yourselves. I am going to tell you a bit about how investment companies work. Then, I am going to tell you about two that haven't worked quite as one would have liked recently. Finally, I will tell you how we can solve most of the problems of the financial industry with one simple step.

I write about investment companies a lot, but mainly from the point of view of the things that they are invested in. However, the key point to note on them is that they are companies, not just funds. It just so happens that their main business is not making widgets, but investing money. As companies, they have a board of directors, which employs a fund manager or a firm of fund managers to manage the shareholders' money.

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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.