London property: if secrecy goes, will prices go too?

Proposed new rules to make public who owns what in London could flush out a lot of dirty money. And that could put a dent in sky-high London property prices, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

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The flight of dirty money could put a dent in sky-high prices.

London property we've written here before about the many headwinds it is now dealing with. There are the changes in the buy-to-let market, the changes to non-dom legislation, and the tax charges over houses held in companies (see our comments on the fast rise of the annual tax on enveloped dwellings (ATED) and the new inheritance tax (IHT) charges). But it looks like a new challenge might be about to hit.

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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.