Merryn Somerset Webb is the Editor in chief of UK personal finance

Personal finance

Personal finance is the application of the principles of finance to the monetary decisions of an individual or family unit. It addresses the ways in which individuals or families obtain, budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future...

 magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 MoneyWeek

MoneyWeek

MoneyWeek is a weekly investment magazine that covers financial and economic news and provides commentary and analysis across UK and global markets...

, writes for the Financial Times

Financial Times

The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....

, the Sunday Post and Saga Magazine and is a radio and television commentator on financial matters. 

After gaining a first class degree

Academic degree

An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...

 in History & Economics as a senior scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Gonville and Caius College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college is often referred to simply as "Caius" , after its second founder, John Keys, who fashionably latinised the spelling of his name after studying in Italy.- Outline :Gonville and...

, Somerset Webb was awarded a Daiwa scholarship

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is a United Kingdom-based charity established in 1988 to support closer links between Britain and Japan...

 and spent a year studying for a masters degree in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

 at the University of London's

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 School of Oriental and African Studies

School of Oriental and African Studies

The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London...

. In 1992, she moved to Japan to continue her Japanese studies and to produce business programmes for NHK

NHK

NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....

, Japan's public television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 station. 

In 1993, she became an institutional broker for SBC Warburg in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, where she stayed for five years. Returning to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1998, to work for BNP Paribas

BNP Paribas

BNP Paribas S.A. is a global banking group, headquartered in Paris, with its second global headquarters in London. In October 2010 BNP Paribas was ranked by Bloomberg and Forbes as the largest bank and largest company in the world by assets with over $3.1 trillion. It was formed through the merger...

, she later became a financial writer for The Week

The Week

The Week, styled as THE WEEK, is a weekly news magazine.-History:It was founded in the United Kingdom by Jolyon Connell in 1995. In April 2001, the magazine began publishing an American edition; an Australian edition followed in October 2008. Dennis Publishing publishes the U.K. and Australian...

. Two years later, in 2000, she took on the role of launch editor for the financial weekly MoneyWeek. 

In 2007 she wrote her first book Love is Not Enough, a personal finance book aimed at women. In 2011 she co-presented Superscrimpers for Channel 4.

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