New industries bring new problems

Data is the new oil. But its very existence – and the fact that so much more is collected every second – comes with some major problems.

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Cybercrime is on the increase

Data. It's the new oil. And the UK is swimming in it. We are, it turns out, the second-leading producer of it in the world something that, as Matthew Lynn points out this week, should be seen as really good news. It reminds us just how well the UK tech sector is doing and bodes brilliantly for our future growth (assuming we drive home our headstart). That said, the existence of all this data and the fact that so much more is collected every second comes with some major problems.

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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.