A useful lesson from Cyprus

The fix to the banking crisis in Cyprus will have come as a bitter pill to the country's savers, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But it's one we're all going to have to swallow.

The crisis in Cyprus is said by practically everyone to reveal the deep flaws in the single currency. This is true. But that isn't a particularly interesting insight. Almost everything that happens these days in some way reveals those flaws.

MoneyWeek readers will also be bored of hearing about capital controls. We've been saying that they would soon return to Europe for several years now and Cyprus makes it clear that not all euros are equal. Some get to move around freely and others do not it depends where the bank you keep them in is domiciled.

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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.