Merryn Somerset Webb

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7,282 appearances 48 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 3d ago

Merryn Somerset Webb’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 48 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 13.

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Merryn Talks Money · Ed Conway on the Hidden Supply Chains That Run the World · 14 Sep 2026 podcast

You've got a car maker, and then you look at the suppliers to said car maker, and they've got their tier one suppliers and then they've got tier two suppliers, and then under matched

Beneath that, you've written lots of tier three p suppliers. matched

And this is a great chart because what it does, it plays into exactly what's going on. matched

that stuff. matched

We have AI for that stuff for making your charts. matched

Um it's it's just interesting because you've got, you know, you've got your three tier ones and then the way you've drawn the tart, there are six tier twos. matched

Maybe there are lows more than that. matched

It's a couple of things. matched

But and this whole idea that at the bottom, making these little parts, as you say, for for mirrors or for lights, or a tiny bit of a chip for this, or a casing for a chip for that, whatever it is, you've got um matched

Maybe hundreds of tier three suppliers, because what do you say, something like thirty thousand parts per car? matched

And you look at that and you think, well, hang on, when we think about supply chains uh branching out around the world and we think of being able to get parts made everywhere, in our heads, a bit like investing, you think, well, that's diversification. matched

So we've diversified supply chains, and that's a good thing. matched

But actually, it brings in a new element of concentration, which is kind of what matched

Worrying. matched

Big companies have effectively outsourced everything along the way. matched

They've outsourced their stockpiling, they've outsourced inventory control, they've outsourced all these mini manufacturing bits. matched

And with that, by doing that, they've outsourced uh responsibility at the same time, outsourced r control and outsourced knowledge of their supply lines because no CEO of a big car company can understand 30,000 separate supply lines. matched

Yeah, 'cause it is one of the things that you talk about in the book is how how surprised you were to find that at crisscrossed in the UK, there are lots of small, medium and small companies making tiny little parts for the car industry and for other industries as well, of course. matched

But still there making precise little things uh that go in in cars all over the place. matched

And what one of the things that you talk about in the early part of the book is um the early discussions around trade, free trade, should you have free trade, shouldn't you have free trade? matched

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