Don’t buy into tech company IPOs

Tech firms are listing on the stockmarket in their droves, with their private-equity backers raking in the cash. That’s perfectly sensible. What’s not so sensible is the number of retail investors buying in.

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Glorified minicab firm Uber is coming to market

Market watchers have been fretting for years now about the decline in the number of listed companies in the US. Back in the 1990s, investors had their pick of about 7,000 stocks. By the early 2000s, that was down to 5,000-odd. Today there are a mere 3,500. That doesn't mean companies are finding it hard to achieve funding. Far from it; it's just that they are finding the money elsewhere.

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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.