Are hedge fund managers worth the money?

Hedge funds brought the concept of absolute returns - that is, actually making money rather than just beating a benchmark - in from the cold. As their popularity has risen, mainstream fund groups have had to agree that positively making money is in fact a good idea. But are hedge fund managers worth their gigantic salaries? MoneyWeek editor Merryn Somerset Webb thinks most of them are better at making themselves rich than their investors...

If you live in London and like to shop you should thank God for hedge-fund managers. Why? Because one way or another they finance most of the fashionable little boutiques where you do your shopping.

From Ledbury Road to Westbourne Grove, to the smarter areas of Fulham and Parsons Green, the streets are lined with little shops selling 15 dresses and a swimming costume each.

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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.