Nicola Sturgeon’s shady Chinese deals give the wrong impression of Scotland

The SNP’s secretive backroom deals with shady Chinese companies do not give the impression that Scotland is a modern, transaparent economy that is open for business, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

You have probably been very busy worrying about the US election and about Brexit. So my guess is that you may not havebeen paying much attention to local politics. Neither have I. So I have only just had a proper look at the total, total debacle that is Scotland's conversations with China.

Back in March, Nicola Sturgeon entered into a memorandum of understanding with two huge Chinese companies SinoFortone and China Railway No 3 Engineering Group (CR3) with a view to developing a relationship that would leave to a programme of investment into "Scottish priority projects and infrastructure". Unfortunately she didn't tell very many people about it (there was an election about). Instead, as The Scotsman tells it, the deal only came to light after details of it were published in the Chinese press.

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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.