How we bashed the bankers

The only way to clean up the banking industry is to hold bankers responsible, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Last week, I sat on a panel at the Soho Literary Festival, having been asked to discuss how the bankers "got away with it" "it" being extending too much credit; taking on too much risk; grossly overpaying themselves; and causing the financial crisis.

This was lots of fun (literary festival audiences are rather different to my usual wealth management audiences), but I had two problems with the premise.

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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.