High Court approves move to freeze Hin Leong's founder's assets

London, (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) – The Singapore High Court has accepted a request to freeze up to $3.5 billion of worldwide assets belonging to Lim Oon Kuin and his two children following the collapse of Lim's oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading, the company's liquidators told creditors, according to local media reports Monday.

The liquidators had asked the court to freeze the family's assets worldwide, from multimillion-dollar homes to shares, funds and country club memberships, to recover money owed to nearly two dozen banks and other creditors globally.

The firm's biggest lenders include HSBC Holdings, DBS, Overseas-Chinese Banking Corp, Bank of China, Societe Generale and Standard Chartered.

In March of this year, the government-owned port operator Jurong Port completed the acquisition of a stake in a major oil terminal owned by the Lim family.

Jurong Port announced it had completed the purchase of a 41% stake in the Universal Terminal from the Lim family, but did not release further details of the transaction.

The terminal was valued at more than $1.5 billion in 2016, following the last reported sale of a stake in the terminal.  

Hin Leong, once Singapore's largest independent oil trading company, collapsed in spectacular fashion during the second quarter of 2020 having run up around $4 billion of trading debts.

Earlier in March, the Singapore High Court approved the winding up of Hin Leong.

Hin Leong had been one of Asia's top refined products traders and shippers for the past three decades; it was particularly active in gasoil, jet fuel and gasoline and was a major supplier of bunker fuel to the shipping industry.