The rise and fall of Hin Leong is a tale of humble beginnings, business acumen, and luck. But above all, it shows that Lim Oon Kuin, a keen poker player, was willing to bet, and bet big, in the loosely regulated and opaque world of oil trading SINGAPORE, LONDON : The letters started to arrive in early April.
One after the other, the titans of global finance, from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to HSBC Holdings Plc, demanded the immediate and urgent repayment of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.
On the receiving end was Hin Leong, one of the most powerful and secretive names in oil trading. Founded in 1963 by a Chinese immigrant known to everyone in the industry as OK Lim, it was a giant in the world of shipping fuel from its base in