Singapore

EAGLE Hospitality Real Estate Investment Trust (EH-Reit), which is part of Singapore-based Eagle Hospitality Trust (EHT), has received net proceeds of about U.S. $153.9 million following the sale of five chapter 11 properties, the Singapore Business Times reported. The net proceeds have been partially used to repay the debtor-in-possession facility and the stalking horse "break up" fee, EH-Reit trustee DBS Trustee said in a bourse filing on Thursday. The balance remaining is around $109.7 million, which will go to repaying ongoing post-petition expenses and pre-petition creditors.

A Singapore court has approved a freeze on up to $3.5 billion of assets of the family behind collapsed Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd, boosting the prospect of debt recovery from the former oil trading empire that counts some of the world’s biggest banks among its creditors, Reuters reported. Hin Leong was wound up in March after failing in a year-long effort to restructure more than $3 billion in debts after the COVID-19-led oil crash laid bare huge losses.

Qantas Airways Ltd. and Singapore Airlines Ltd. are traveling in opposite directions when it comes to the coronavirus crisis, with the former emerging strongly thanks to its buoyant home market and the latter mired in trouble with record losses as it can barely fly anywhere, Bloomberg News reported. While not out of the woods just yet, Qantas said Thursday it expects revenue from routes within Australia to almost double in the six months through June from the second half of last year.

The National Wages Council (NWC) convened today to relook at guidelines on wage- and employment-related issues amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Straits Times reported. In its deliberations, it will take into account the domestic and global economic situations and outlook given the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, as well as Singapore's pace of recovery, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said on Wednesday.

An excess of $370 million in wage support was erroneously paid out last year after the Singaporean government used the wrong dates to determine the amount that 5,400 companies should get, the Straits Times reported. The same error also resulted in an excess of $1.2 million being paid out in foreign worker levy waivers and rebates to 360 companies.

A ruling on a request to freeze the assets of Lim Oon Kuin and his two children following the collapse of Lim’s oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd will be made at a later date, following a whole day’s hearing at the Singapore High Court, Reuters reported. Court-appointed liquidators of Hin Leong had asked the court to freeze the family’s assets worldwide, from multi-million-dollar homes to country club memberships, shares and funds to recover money owed to nearly two dozen banks and other creditors globally.

Stung by the collapse of Asia’s top independent oil trading firm, some global banks have teamed up to seek the personal assets of the family behind Hin Leong Trading, which has left creditors on the hook for billions of dollars, Reuters reported. As part of what sources say is the biggest legal case in living memory in Singapore, liquidators and creditors are hunting for assets from the city-state to China to Australia belonging to the Lim family, after the Singapore-based company was wound up in March.

Lim Oon Kuin, the founder of collapsed oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd, is expected to face another 23 charges of forgery-related offences soon, Singapore’s prosecution said, Reuters reported. The 23 charges are expected to be tendered on April 8, Deputy Public Prosecutor Navin Naidu told a Singapore court on Monday. The Singapore Attorney-General’s Chambers confirmed the prosecutor’s comments. Last year, Singapore police charged the 78-year-old former oil tycoon, better known as O.K. Lim, with two counts of abetment of forgery for the purpose of cheating. Owned by O.K.

Singapore’s High Court on Monday approved an application to wind up collapsed oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd, marking the end of what was once one of Asia’s top oil traders, Reuters reported. Hin Leong, owned by Singaporean tycoon Lim Oon Kuin and his children, racked up some $4 billion in debt and entered court restructuring nearly a year ago. The company had been seeking to restructure its debts after the oil price crash last year when Lim admitted in a court document to directing the firm not to disclose hundreds of millions of dollars in losses over several years.

The Singapore High Court on Tuesday granted oil trader GP Global APAC Pte Ltd a six-month debt moratorium, the company’s lawyers said on Thursday, paving the way for its parent company to restructure more than $1 billion in debt, Reuters reported. GP APAC is the Singapore unit of GP Global, a global oil trader and ship fuel supplier based in the United Arab Emirates that is in default amid allegations that employers carried out fraudulent trades.