The Trust factor

Family trusts can be useful to protect ownership of promoters, but they need to be carefully structured

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MARA RAJA ENERGY & Mobility is the latest to opt for the increasingly popular family trust route to secure wealth for promoters. The company's ageing patriarch, Ramachandra Naidu Galla, 86, farmed out the promoter entity's 33% holding to four new family trusts, which, according to a filing to the stock exchanges last week, are aimed at a "structured and seamless intergenerational succession...so as to eradicate the possibility of future conflict". Galla will be the controlling trustee which should help in consolidating and ring-fencing the ownership of family assets. The need for setting up the trusts was long overdue as the third generation of the family has joined the business and is part of the company's board.