HOW ORDINARY PEOPLE CAN CHANGE THE WAY CAPITALISM WORKS – AND MAKE MONEY TOO
MERRYN SOMERSET WEBB
Short Books, 160pp, £9.99
In her new book the editor-in-chief of
Money Week magazine, Merryn Somerset Webb, draws a bead on fund managers. She says it’s SHARE POWER manifestly unfair that this ‘smallish group of very well paid, mostly group-thinking men’ ignores all but the wealthiest of their shareholders. In theory, anyone who belongs to a pension fund or has an ISA – at least 20 million of us – is entitled to vote on how the fund is invested. In practice we very rarely get the chance. The technology exists for fund managers to canvas us. Isn’t it time, asks Somerset Webb, that they made use of it?
To show what individual shareholders can achieve Somerset Webb recalls the Gilbert brothers, two American champions of ‘corporate democracy’, who made a nuisance of themselves at the AGMS of the 1,500 companies in which they held shares. One of them blew a clown’s horn every time a CEO said something he considered silly.
The Gilberts were wealthy individuals who inherited money made in the California Gold Rush. But as Emilie Bellet noted in the
Financial Times, ‘this concise and enjoyable read’ proves you don’t need to be a ‘big player’ to have your say. ‘There are a number of small steps that individual investors can take to ensure they have a greater share in the businesses they ultimately own. These include being more visible and vocal by banding together in grassroots shareholder activist groups or engaging with investment platforms, fund managers and even local politicians.’
In the Times, Robert Colville described Share Power as ‘a breezy, accessible and admirably brief summary of what the stock market is, how it works, and where it isn’t working well enough …. Somerset Webb says it took her a while to write because “there are too many long books around – and I suspect very few are read from cover to cover”. This one should be.’