The Times - UK (2020-10-20)

the times | Tuesday October 20 2020 1GM 15

News

A steel tycoon who spent £50 million on

his daughter’s wedding claims that he

owes £2.5 billion, which would make

him Britain’s biggest bankrupt.

Pramod Mittal, 64, was declared

bankrupt in the summer with debts of

more than £130 million, but now says

that he owes £2,549,089,370, including

more than £170 million to his 94-year-

old father. He values his assets at

£110,000.

He is offering to pay his creditors

0.18p for every pound owed and hopes

that they will agree tomorrow.

Mr Mittal, whose brother Lakshmi is

said to be worth almost £7 billion, sets

out his affairs in an individual volun-

tary arrangement that he hopes will re-

solve his bankruptcy. His wife, San-

geeta, 59, is owed £1.1 million; their son

Divyesh, 30, a further £2.4 million and

his brother-in-law Amit Lohia, 45, a

total of £1.1 million.

Mr Mittal said: “I have no personal

income. My wife is financially indep-

endent from me. We have separate

bank accounts and I have very limited

information regarding her income. My

Road deaths put

hedgehogs at

extinction risk

Fariha Karim

The number of hedgehogs killed on

British roads could be three times the

amount previously estimated and risks

wiping them out, a study suggests.

Research indicated that a rise in road

users was leading to many more of the

animals dying. Hedgehogs, which have

been listed as vulnerable to extinction

on the Red List for British Mammals,

have declined by up to 50 per cent in

rural areas and 30 per cent in urban

areas over two decades, according to a

report in 2018.

Previous studies suggested that

113,000 hedgehogs are killed on roads

every year. However, researchers at

Nottingham Trent University now say

that figure could be as high as 335,000.

The author of the study, carried out

with Cambridge, Reading and Cardiff

universities, suggested that the high

death rate could lead to local extinction.

Lauren Moore, a PhD student at Not-

tingham Trent, said: “This is alarming,

especially since we don’t have robust

population estimates. Although we

know some hedgehogs use road cross-

ing structures, we don’t know how ef-

fective these are.”

I’m Britain’s biggest bankrupt with

£45 worth of land, says steel tycoon

David Brown personal expenditure of approximately
£2,000 to £3,000 per month is mainly
met by my wife and family. The legal
costs of my bankruptcy are being met
by another third party.”
Mr Mittal claims that the family
home belongs to a British Virgin
Islands company in which he has “no
beneficial interest”, adding: “As such,
the property does not form part of my
estate, however it is intended that I con-
tinue to reside at this property for the
duration of the arrangement.”
His biggest single creditor is a British
Virgin Islands company called Direct
Investments Ltd, which claims to be
owned £1 billion.
Mr Mittal says that the only other
property he owns is a plot of land near
Delhi worth £45. He says that he has
jewellery worth £7,000 and owned
three watches valued at £6,000 that he
gave to his three children. Several vin-
tage cars that he owned when he
moved from India to the UK in 1998 are
now worth £1,000 and he has shares
valued at £66,669 in Indian and Niger-
ian companies.
Mr Mittal said that Divyesh had
agreed to make a £4.46 million contrib-

ution towards the settlement but only if

the bankruptcy were lifted.

Mr Mittal’s bankruptcy trustee has

demanded that his wife repay £591,

he transferred to her after the petition

for his bankruptcy.

The origins of the bankruptcy date

back to 2006 when he acted as a guar-

antor for the debts of Global Ispat Kok-

sna Industrija Lukavac, a Bosnian pro-

ducer of coke used in steel making. He

was pursued by Stemcor, one of the

world’s largest steel trading companies,

when the coke producer failed to repay

$166 million of financing in 2013.

Stemcor later hived off its non-trad-

ing businesses, including Mr Mittal’s

guarantee, into a separate company

called Moorgate Industries,

which obtained the bank-

ruptcy order from Judge

Catherine Burton in the

insolvency and companies

court in June.

Moorgate says that Mr

Mittal’s family appear to be

shareholders in some of the

companies to which he claims to owe

money and other creditor companies

appear to no longer exist. John Soden,

director of Moorgate, described Mr

Mittal’s proposed settlement as shame-

ful. If agreed it would mean the com-

pany receiving £250,000 of the

£140 million awarded by a court.

“The proposal makes a mockery of

insolvency laws and processes,” he said.

“I have seen evidence given in court by

Mr Mittal that states there are assets,

and one in particular, which could

provide realisations of up to

£2 billion in a matter of months.”

Mr Mittal claims that £56 mil-

lion of loans he had taken out

had swelled to more than £2 bil-

lion because of interest pay-

ments.

Mr Mittal’s lawyer has not

responded to requests for

comment but Opus Restruc-

turing, his nominee for the

financial agreement, said:

“We have not seen any evi-

dence to suggest that the

debtor’s liabilities are not

accurately presented in the

proposal.”

Pramod Mittal says he

owes his father £170 million

Bumper

crop as

forests

go nuts

T

his is proving to

be a bumper

autumn for

acorns and

fruits across

the nation’s forests

thanks to a phenomenon

in which trees

synchronise their most

productive years (Will

Humphries writes).

Forestry England, the

country’s largest land

manager with more than

1,500 woods and forests,

says that many areas are

experiencing a “mast

year”, a strategy of

superabundance that

occurs every five to ten

years and produces so

many acorns and nuts,

known as mast, that

animals can never eat

them all, giving the best

chance for new saplings

to establish themselves.

This is the same

evolutionary tactic as

the synchronised

eruptions of termites

and the boom-and-bust

breeding cycles of short-

tailed voles. The aim is

to outcompete predators

by overwhelming them

with offspring.

It’s not just acorns that

have fared well. At

Westonbirt, the National

Arboretum in

Gloucestershire,

hawthorn, Hupeh crab

apple and mountain ash

are also cropping well.

Andrew Smith,

director of Westonbirt,

said: “We experienced a

warm and dry spring,

which are the perfect

conditions for flowers to

set seeds. This, along

with no late frost, meant

that flowers and young

fruit survived into

summer. The warm and

moist summer has

meant the nuts, fruits

and berries have filled

out well and are

continuing to ripen

nicely.

“Part of the

fascination of

experiencing a mast

year is that we

don’t

completely

understand the

complex blend

of factors that

give rise to

them and allow

plants and trees

to co-ordinate

the production

of so much fruit

and seed.”

Oaks usually

undergo the

process every four years.

Producing fruit in a

mast year does stunt

growth of the tree but as

this only occurs every

five to ten years, it is a

worthy pay-off to ensure

more saplings.

Trees such as oak and

beech fluctuate

massively year on year

in the fruit they produce

— in some years no fruit

will be seen and in

others, they have an

exceptional crop.

Incidences of Lyme

disease could increase

because of the knock-on

boom in mammals such

as mice that carry this

tick-spread disease.

A mast year was last

reported in parts of

Britain in 2017.

The phenomenon of “mast

years”, observed among

trees at the arboretum in

Westonbirt, has been a

field day for some animals

TIM IRELAND/XINHUA/REX; RUSSELL SACH; FORESTRY ENGLAND

ung outwell andddd are

ye

do

co

un

co

of

gi

th

pl

to

th

of

an

un

ocessev