Contrarian: Why transparency is not the answer to all our problems

The industry needs to agree a proper measure of value added by managers in the investment process, writes David Stevenson.

This is not a book review column but I strongly advise Investment Week readers to pick up a wonderful futurist novel called The Circle by Dave Eggers. It is a great read with a serious message: that transparency is not the answer to all our problems. The idea is elegant and deliberately familiar – a large Silicon Valley behemoth designs software that allows consumers to be completely transparent online. It is not just social media and photos that are shared, because in Eggers' frankly dystopian brave new world even our feelings and ideas become transparent, and the entire political...