Diversify your nationality – get a second passport

The rush for passports after the Brexit vote may have been hasty – but “political diversification” makes sense, and not just for tax purposes. Merryn Somerset Webb explains.

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On Friday 24 June last year, online searches for "how to get an Irish passport" spiked. On the following Monday, the Irish embassy in London and post offices in Northern Ireland received 4,000 related queries up from the normal figure of 200 a day. By Wednesday, demand was such that the Irish foreign affairs minister had to ask that the British hold off applying for a passport unless immediately necessary: the system just couldn't cope. By the end of the year, Ireland had issued 10% more passports than in 2015, with the extras mostly issued after the UK's vote on European Union membership.

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RankPassportCountries to visit visa-free
1Germany176
2Sweden175
=3Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain, US174
=8Austria, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, UK173
=16Ireland, Japan, New Zealand172
=19Canada, Greece, Portugal, Switzerland171
=23Australia, South Korea170
25Iceland169
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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.