Singapore

The Singapore arm of bankrupt Danish shipping fuel trader OW Bunker will meet with its liquidator KPMG in early December to discuss the firm's outstanding debt, which totals almost $1.5 billion globally, Reuters reported. OW Bunker, a leading supplier of marine fuel oil known as "bunker", filed for bankruptcy in Denmark earlier this month after it revealed losses of at least $125 million at one of its Singapore-based subsidiaries Dynamic Oil Trading, sending the bunker fuel market into turmoil.

The bankruptcy filing of a giant shipping-fuel supplier has sent shock waves through Singapore, one of the world’s busiest ports, with companies in the city bracing for a number of payment defaults and worries over a potential cash crunch, The Wall Street Journal reported. Small buyers and sellers of shipping fuel, also known as bunker fuel, are expected to be hit the most in Singapore, where the industry is worth $20 billion to $25 billion in sales a year. The scare has also led to higher fuel prices and panic buying in other Asian ports and the Middle East.

A flurry of firms have filed lawsuits against the Singapore units of bankrupt Danish shipping fuel trader OW Bunker, with claims totalling more than S$5 million, and traders say this is likely just the beginning of a wave of court actions. Court documents seen by Reuters showed that the overall amount of claims made against OW Bunker Far East and Dynamic Oil Trading, both Singapore-based subsidiaries of the Danish firm, over unpaid supplies now total around S$5.3 million ($4.11 million) made by nearly half a dozen companies.

A creditor of bankrupt OW Bunker is preparing a lawsuit in Singapore seeking to reclaim its money, court documents showed, as the fallout from the collapse of the world's largest marine fuel supplier begins to ripple through the sector, Reuters reported. In a separate case, court documents showed a second ship fuel company, Vanguard Energy Pte Ltd, filed for bankruptcy in the city state on Oct. 29, a week before OW Bunker said it had been driven to insolvency by suspected fraud at its Singapore trading unit.

As Asian countries roll out Basel III frameworks for their banks, the CEO of Singapore's biggest lender has warned that the more stringent bank capital rules for the region's already well-capitalised lenders may hurt economic growth in the region, Reuters reported. "Asia's banking system is already strong as (banks) generally emerged unscathed from the global financial crisis. If the new rules try to make it super strong, what gives is the capacity of the banks to provide credit," said Piyush Gupta, CEO at DBS.

Singapore’s home prices declined for a fourth consecutive quarter, the longest losing streak in five years, as tighter mortgage measures cooled demand in Asia’s second-most expensive housing market, Bloomberg News reported. An index tracking private residential prices fell 0.6 percent to 208.1 points in the three months ended Sept. 30, following a 1 percent decline in the previous three-month period, according to preliminary data released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority today. The decline matched the losing streak ended June 2009, the data showed.

Major reforms of insolvency laws are in the process of being enacted, as Singapore tries to position itself as a regional hub for insolvency work and debt restructuring, said Senior Minister of State for Law Indranee Rajah on Monday, Channel NewsAsia reported. Speaking at the Regional Insolvency Conference organised by the Law Society of Singapore, she noted that an increase in global interest rates and a tightening of liquidity in markets are likely to increase the risk of corporate defaults. This could in turn lead to an increase in a number of restructuring and insolvencies.

Singapore said banks with a “significant retail presence” in the city-state will soon be required to maintain some liquid assets in the country to support their short-term cash outflows, Bloomberg News reported. The new liquidity framework applies to all currencies, and banks also need to hold liquid Singapore dollar assets separately to manage their liabilities in the local currency, Lim Hng Kiang, the deputy chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, or MAS, said in a speech last night.

CapitaLand Ltd., Singapore’s biggest developer, may alter the size of its apartments as it seeks to improve affordability to combat government measures aimed at curbing speculation and lowering prices, Bloomberg reported. The developer sold 139 residential units in the island-state in the three months ended June, 31 percent fewer than in the same period last year, it said yesterday as it forecast “headwinds” in the near term with the housing curbs.

Singapore will from Monday make it a money-laundering offence for banks to assist tax-evaders stash their funds in the Asian city-state, in the latest move by the region’s fastest-growing wealth management hub to join the global crackdown on tax evasion and illicit funds, the Financial Times reported. The fight against tax evasion is playing out against a backdrop of rising wealth among the world’s richest people, creating a scramble by banks to offer services in tax-efficient jurisdictions such as Singapore.