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SINGAPORE (REUTERS) – About a third of the roughly 150 ships owned by companies controlled by Singaporean tycoon Lim Oon Kuin and his family were sold as part of efforts to pay off billions of dollars of debt with creditors, two said. sources to Reuters.
Accounting firm Grant Thornton, the court-appointed supervisor of Xihe Holdings, put several boats up for sale through boat brokers in September last year. Xihe Holdings is owned by the Lim family and had most of their fleet.
The remainder of the ships are majority owned by Xihe Capital, currently in liquidation according to the records of the Singapore company register, and 10 single-purpose companies.
The ships owned by the Xihe group have been sold at prices of US $ 2 million (S $ 2.65 million) to US $ 3 million each for coastal barges and around US $ 30 million each for very large oil carriers ( VLCC), the two sources said.
Buyers include Greek boat owners, one of the sources said.
No further details were available, including the total amount of money raised thus far.
The rest of the ships are expected to be sold by the end of this year, although some of them are involved in various lawsuits as counterparts try to reclaim the cargoes on the ships, the source said.
The sources declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media. A representative for the Lim family, their attorney and Grant Thornton did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the sale of the boats.
Lim Oon Kuin, better known as OK Lim, with his son Evan Lim Chee Meng and daughter Lim Huey Ching, had owned just over 150 ships before his flagship trading company Hin Leong Trading, the fleet manager Ocean Tankers (Pte ) Ltd and Xihe Holdings were placed under judicial management last year.
Most of Lims’ fleet remains dormant in the South China Sea, off the eastern Malaysian peninsula, Refinitiv Eikon shipping data showed.
Other assets being sold include the family’s stake in Universal Terminal and a lubricants plant in Singapore.
Last month, receivers filed a request to liquidate Hin Leong, nearly a year after the once one of Asia’s top oil traders racked up some $ 4 billion in debt and entered a restructuring. judicial.
Hin Leong had been trying to restructure his debts after the oil price crash last year when OK Lim admitted in a court document that he ordered the company not to disclose hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for several years.
The accounting agency PwC said in a report last year that Hin Leong had no future as an independent company after it “grossly overstated” the value of its assets by at least $ 3 billion.
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