Have fund managers ruined capitalism?

Fund managers need to start looking more to the long term, says Merryn Somerset Webb. And it appears that some are now starting to.

In the MoneyWeek editor's letter this week I issued a call to arms. Subscribers can read the full letter here (please do it is a very important subject). The point was to beg the nation's fund managers to have a go at saving the shareholder capitalism that served us all so well in the 1980s and early 1990s by using their power as owners to force big companies to behave better.

I wasn't expecting much of a response (the industry isn't that good at this stuff). But before our magazine had even rolled off the printing presses, one manager was out there saying the right things. "Top investor turns on Google over tax sham" said the headline in yesterday's Times.

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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.