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CIMB Singapore has raised the ire of customers with its move to raise the floor of certain mortgages pegged to the one-month Singapore interbank offered rate (Sibor) - with that floor rate now higher than the prevailing market rate. From May 18, customers on CIMB's floating-rate mortgages linked to the Sibor or Swap Offer Rate (Sor) must stomach being charged a minimum of 0.9 per cent, compared to the previous floor rate of 0.1 per cent, a notification letter seen by The Business Times showed. Disgruntled customers told BT that they consider the move "highly unethical" and intend to challenge the bank on the decision. CIMB is believed to be the first bank to increase its floor rate for such floating-rate mortgages amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with most banks keeping the floor rate of about zero. Floor rates are understood to protect lenders from losses, and introduced as a clause in loan contracts in the case of a collapse in rates. For example, in 2011, the Sor ...

PRESSED for time as it grapples with a debt pile of US$4 billion, Singapore's giant oil trader Hin Leong Trading (HLT) has pulled out its application to the court for a debt moratorium and decided instead to go down the judicial management path, according to sources. The Business Times understands that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) LLP, the accounting firm that was hired by the trader to help fix its dire financials and "protect and preserve its assets and cash", will be appointed as interim judicial manager. The move has surprised some market watchers. "It puzzles me. There are very good reasons to stick to section 211B (of the Companies Act that involves a moratorium order)," said Robson Lee, a Singapore-based partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. "JM (judicial management) is a blunt instrument that works in limited situations. The hard truth is that JM is value destructive since management - with its know-how, connections and technical exp...

SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) - The letters started to arrive in early April. One after the other, the titans of global finance, from JPMorgan Chase & Co to HSBC Holdings, 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 O.K. Lim, it was a giant in the world of shipping fuel from its base in Singapore. Over the decades it had become one of the most fabled trading houses, the source of a billion-dollar fortune, and the subject of stories about legendary deals that made rivals sweat. But earlier this month, as oil prices collapsed in the fallout from the coronavirus, its foundations crumbled. Banks had already been pulling credit lines, spooked by defaults at other trading houses. Smelling something wrong at Hin Leong, they started to ask for their money. When it faile...