How negative yields could destroy the stockmarket

If the domination of negative yields continues, companies will give up on the equity markets. Why, when you are paid to borrow, would you look to the stockmarket instead?

Marks & Spencer © Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer: a giant no longer
(Image credit: Marks & Spencer © Marks & Spencer)

It's been a bad week for Marks & Spencer. With its share price half of what it was five years ago, one of our most iconic retailers has been fairly unceremoniously chucked out of the FTSE 100 index. This is hardly a surprise. Younger generations haven't taken to its clothing lines. The food business is hideously competitive. And M&S is dealing with almost non-stop disruption in the retail environment in the UK. However, given that it was the fifth-largest firm in the index when it launched in the 1980s, the expulsion is still no small humiliation.

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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.