An overlooked sector for long-term investors

This profitable sector isn't well promoted, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But if you're willing to be patient, it could be just the ticket.

I went to a book launch last Saturday with a favourite friend. The novelist gave a short talk: the book sounded great; she looked calmly glamorous* and I was impressed.Perhaps, I said to my friend, I might try writing fiction. "Surely", she said, "you already have".

She had read last week's article earlier in the day and noted that I had made a mistake on the tax treatment of any excess pension holdings over the new lifetime allowance (LTA - £1.25m from April). I had suggested that everyone pays the same punitive tax rate of 55%. But it isn't quite that simple.

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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.