Share Power Book Review

Book Review by ShareSoc Director Cliff Weight

Brilliant, insightful, fun and easy to read short book on how ordinary people can change the way that capitalism works. Merryn Somerset Webb’s Share Power is a page turner. I recommend all ShareSoc members buy a copy and read its 145 pages.

Should companies care about climate change? Should they be vanquishing the gender pay gap? Should they be advancing human rights in their supply chains? With 11 million people owning shares directly or indirectly, it’s time for the individual owners of corporate UK to assert their rights and empower themselves. Merryn’s manifesto explains how this can be done and capitalism transformed. She makes a convincing case for public markets and greater shareholder democracy, shifting the balance of power from managers back to individual equity owners. This is a blueprint for reimagining capitalism in the post Covid era.

It very much matches ShareSoc’s view that companies should engage with individual investors and listen better to investor views.

FT columnist Gillian Tett, said “This book is a lively, lucid bracing and brilliantly forthright love letter to everyone who believes in the principles of democratic capitalism. It should be essential material for anyone who has a pension or investment account… And is a must read for the City of London and corporate leaders today.”

Buy it here!