Business
Two charged after collapse of funeral plan firm Safe Hands
Two men have been charged after an investigation into suspected fraud at a collapsed funeral plan provider.
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said it has charged Richard Wells, 39, residing in Spain, and Neil Debenham, 43, of Norwich, with conspiracy to defraud.
It comes after an investigation by the SFO into potential fraud at funeral plan business Safe Hands and parent firm SHP Capital Holdings.
Mr Wells is the former director of SHP Capital while Mr Debenhams was a senior executive at the business.
Safe Hands Plans was a pre-paid funeral plan business which collapsed into administration in 2022.
The SFO said the charges relate to the failure of the business after it was unable to secure necessary regulatory approval for the ongoing sale of its plans.
Around 46,000 people had bought plans before the company collapsed, expecting a contribution towards future funeral costs.
After the collapse of Safe Hands, it was no longer able to uphold its pledge to ensure that someone’s funeral was paid for when they died.
FRP said creditors of the company have claimed around £70.6 million.
The SFO initially launched an investigation into the business in 2023.
Emma Luxton, director of operations at the SFO, said: “This scheme marketed peace of mind to tens of thousands of people, many of them vulnerable.
“That promise dissolved when it collapsed, leaving plan holders exposed, out of pocket and uncertain about their funeral arrangements.
“Today’s charges mark a critical step in our investigation.”
The men are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on February 5.
Business
Holding listed company shares via family trusts – Who can be trustees and beneficiaries? – The Times of India
By Varun SriramIn the last several years, across India’s listed company backdrop, a subtle but significant shift has been underway in how promoter families are viewing succession planning. As first and second-generation entrepreneurs confront the realities of longevity, generational transition, and increasingly complex family structures, traditional modes of succession such as simple testamentary transfers or inter se family arrangements are falling short in meeting objectives. In their place, private family trusts are emerging as a preferred vehicle for holding promoter shareholdings in listed companies. This trend is not merely about estate planning in the narrow sense, but it reflects a broader re-engineering of governance, wealth stewardship and risk management. By transferring shares to private trusts, families seek to ring-fence ownership from personal exigencies, mitigate succession disputes, ensure unified voting and control, and create a long-term framework that can outlive individual family members. At the same time, such transfers raise nuanced questions under corporate and tax laws including from a SEBI regulatory perspective.There has been recent news, outlining how business families in India are pursuing SEBI to recognise daughters-in-law as ‘relative’ under SEBI takeover code. Let us break down the context and relevance of this to succession planning with a listed company angle.What is SEBI Takeover CodeSEBI (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations 2011, generally known as the Takeover Code are the regulations that inter-alia governs and deals with change in control in the listed company landscape. Per the code, alterations to significant shareholding (25% or more) or control of listed companies results in what is called an ‘open offer’ requirement. Open offer means an offer made to buy at least 26% of the shares from public shareholders. This open offer needs to be made by the party making the acquisition from certain shareholders that would trigger change in significant shareholding or control of the listed company. Open offer enables public shareholders to get a fair opportunity to participate in any significant acquisition or change of control eventuality. Exemptions to Open Offer requirement – Immediate RelativesWhile the rationale for open offer is to protect public shareholders, Takeover Code recognises that not all transfers of shares in listed companies should result in open offer including where such transfers are inter-se immediate relatives. ‘Immediate relatives’ is defined under the Takeover Code to mean any spouse of a person, and includes parent, brother, sister or child of such person or of the spouse. At this juncture, it may be noted that said definition does not include daughters-in-law or sons-in-law. SEBI Norms for transfers to private trust structures While transfer of shares to ‘immediate relatives’ is exempt from open offer requirements as per Regulation 10 of the Takeover Code, there is no express exemption for transfer of shares to private trusts of promoter families.Section 11 of the Takeover Code however enables SEBI to accept applications from shareholders seeking exemption from open offer requirements and based on merit of each case, either grant or reject the exemption that is sought by the applicant. Using this provision, several promoters of listed companies in the last decade or so have applied for transfer of shares to family private trusts. In many instances, the exemptions have been granted based on bona fides and conditions that SEBI has prescribed. In fact, SEBI has issued a Circular in 2017 taking cognizance of this aspect and summarized conditions usually under which such applications are granted. Some of the key and relevant conditions for the purposes of this article are that (i) the Trust is in substance, only a mirror image of the promoters’ holdings and consequently, there is no change of ownership or control of the shares or voting rights in the target company and (ii) only individual promoters or their immediate relatives or lineal descendants are Trustees and beneficiaries.This meant that SEBI considered favourably for transfer of shares to such private trust structures only where immediate relatives were trustees and beneficiaries. This is where the anomaly lies since daughters-in-law or sons-in-law not forming part of the definition of immediate relatives would mean that if they were trustees, the trust structure would not satisfy the conditions as enumerated by SEBI. The way forwardSuccession planning in promoter led Indian companies must be viewed through a commercial and generational standpoint, not a narrow, technical one. The objective of the Takeover Code is to protect public shareholders from adverse changes in control, not to obstruct bona fide inter-generational transitions within promoter families where control, intent and economic ownership remain aligned. Modern Indian families and businesses no longer operate within rigid, patriarchal structures. Daughters-in-law often play substantive roles in business governance and are integral to succession plans. Excluding them from the definition of ‘immediate relatives’ under the Takeover Code creates artificial compliance triggers.Given this, it needs to be seen if SEBI, having generally recognised that family trust transfers made purely for succession purposes do not undermine investor protection, codifies the position by including in-laws within permitted succession structures along with necessary safeguards to protect the integrity of the system.(Varun Sriram is Partner, JSA Advocates & Solicitors. Views expressed are personal)
Archie Mitchelland
Danielle Kaye,Business reporters
Getty ImagesDonald Trump has made clear he covets Greenland.
Now he claims to have secured the “framework” of a future deal, to address defence on the island – a deal that he says includes rights to rare earth minerals.
So what natural resources does Greenland have?
Greenland is believed to sit on top of large reserves of oil and natural gas.
It is also said to be home to the vast majority of raw materials considered crucial for electronics, green energy and other strategic and military technologies – to which Trump has been pushing to secure America’s access.
Overall, 25 of 34 minerals deemed “critical raw materials” by the European Commission are found in Greenland, including graphite, niobium and titanium, according to the 2023 Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
Greenland’s strategic importance is “not just about defence”, Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said at a Senate hearing last year about the potential acquisition of Greenland, pointing to the island’s “vast reserves of rare earth elements”.
Trump has sometimes downplayed the importance of those resources, pointing to what he claims is rising Russian and Chinese influence in the region to justify his claims that the US has to “have” the island.
“I want Greenland for security – I don’t want it for anything else,” he told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, pointing in part to the difficulty of exploring in the Arctic region. “You have to go 25ft down through ice to get it. It’s not, it’s not something that a lot of people are going to do or want to do.”
But access to the island’s natural resources have loomed large in the background for the administration, which has put the US economy at the centre of its geopolitical vision and has made combatting China’s dominance of the rare earths industry a priority.
Trump’s interest in controlling Greenland is “primarily about access to those resources, and blocking China’s access”, according to Steven Lamy, professor of international relations at the University of Southern California.
Even before Trump’s second term, the US had been tightening its ties with Greenland, including by reopening its consulate in the island’s capital, Nuuk, in 2020, responding to Russia and China’s expanding military presence in the Arctic.
Since Trump returned to office, his allies have talked up the island’s commercial potential, as rising temperatures expand sea routes and opportunities to explore the region’s fisheries and other natural resources, especially those related to defence, such as energy and critical minerals, that the administration sees as a priority.
“This is about shipping lanes. This is about energy. This is about fisheries. And, of course, it’s about your mission, which is keeping us safe and monitoring space, monitoring our adversaries, and making sure the American people can sleep safely in their homes, day in and day out,” Mike Waltz, the current US ambassador to the United Nations and then Trump’s national security adviser, told US troops stationed in Greenland last year.
And Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry told CNBC this month that Trump was a “business president” who believed the island represented “a more robust trading opportunity”.
Over the summer, the Trump administration signed off on the possibility of backing an American company’s mining project in Greenland, via $120m (£90m) in financing from the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
The plan built on other deals the Trump administration has agreed with Australia and Japan, as well as private firms, to secure US access to supply and production of rare earths, an industry now dominated by China.
Dr Patrick Schröder, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, said the scale of Greenland’s critical minerals holdings had the potential to “shift the dial” for the US, allowing it to reduce its reliance on China – a key priority for the administration.
But critics of Trump’s designs on the island, say it is not clear why US control would be necessary to access the island’s resources.
Analysts also warn that tapping them is easier said than done.
Among other challenges, mining in Greenland currently is expensive and hampered by severe weather conditions, a lack of infrastructure and a small labour force, Lamy said.
While exploration permits have been given for 100 blocs of the island, there are just two productive mines in Greenland.
“Greenland has been trying to attract outside investments into its extractive industries for a long time, and has not had a lot of luck because the business case just hasn’t really been there,” said Mikkel Runge Olesen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.
“It’s true that there are huge quantities of minerals of various kinds in Greenland. However, it also costs a lot of money to extract those minerals.”
But Prof Andrew Shepherd, director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said rapidly melting layers of ice are increasingly easing the process, exposing rock for potential mining and creating river runoff.
“Getting all the fieldwork done traditionally has been very hard to do because you have to get energy to remote regions,” he told the BBC.
“With the melting ice, you get the potential for hydro power in the area where the land is being exposed… so this presents itself as an interesting prospect.”
Jennifer Spence, director of the Arctic Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School, said when it came to mining in Greenland, “it’s all still about potential”.
Still, she thinks the island’s strategic shipping location and rare earths deposits were key factors drawing Trump’s attention.
“His logic is that there’s a national security imperative,” Spence said. “My belief is that this is much more economically driven.”
Additional reporting by Natalie Sherman
New Delhi: India’s foreign exchange reserves witnessed a massive surge of $14.167 billion to reach $701.36 billion in the week ended January 16, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed on Friday. In the preceding week that ended January 9, the country’s foreign exchange reserves had increased by $392 million.
The largest component of the foreign exchange reserves, Foreign Currency Assets (FCA), increased by $9.65 billion in the week ended January 16, reaching $560.51 billion. FCA includes the value of other major global currencies such as the yen, euro and pound, in addition to the dollar, expressed in dollar terms.
The gold reserves also increased by $4.6 billion to $117.45 billion in the reporting period. According to the RBI, the value of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) decreased by $35 million to $18.70 billion in the week ended January 16. The value of the reserve position in the IMF decreased by $73 million to $4.684 billion.
Previously, on October 17, 2025, the country’s foreign exchange reserves had reached $702.25 billion. The all-time high for India’s foreign exchange reserves is $704.89 billion, recorded in September 2024.
Foreign exchange reserves are very important for any country and reflect its economic condition. They also play a significant role in stabilising the exchange rate. For example, if the rupee comes under pressure against the dollar and its value falls, the Central Bank can use its foreign exchange reserves to prevent the rupee from depreciating further against the dollar and maintain exchange rate stability.
Rising foreign exchange reserves also indicate a large inflow of dollars into the country, which strengthens the economy. Furthermore, an increase in reserves makes it easier for the country to conduct international trade. The steady rise in foreign exchange reserves comes amid strong capital inflows into the country, with India witnessing a notable increase in foreign direct investment commitments during the current financial year.
87% of India’s exports to EU pay higher import tariffs from Jan 1
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Holding listed company shares via family trusts – Who can be trustees and beneficiaries? – The Times of India
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