Dylan Grice: Why the man with one hand is buying miners

Merryn Somerset Webb talks to Dylan Grice about Japan, America, gold, and the commodities boom.

Merryn Somerset Webb talks to Dylan Grice about Japan, America, gold, and the commodities boom.It isn't often that there is standing room only at a presentation on the future of the Japanese economy. But that's what I found when I arrived, admittedly a tad late, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre to listen to Dylan Grice speak last week. And I didn't even hear that much either. My choice was to hover in the doorway behind a quite fat and very tall man, or to retire for a coffee and talk to Dylan later. The coffee won and I met him in the press room when he finally escaped from his hordes of admirers.

So what makes Dylan capable of selling out a conference hall when he is, on the face of it at least, talking about one of the most trying subjects known to market strategists? I think I know the answer. You'll know the old joke about how what we really need is a one-handed economist (to stop them constantly bleating on about 'on the one hand this' and 'on the other hand that'). Well, Dylan is the man with just one hand. He has a series of good, well-backed and very strong opinions. And unless the circumstances change dramatically, he sticks to them.

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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.