Last checked at 
(Corrects Tony Lin is a director, not a founder of Zenrock in
paragraph 10)
By Jessica Jaganathan and Roslan Khasawneh
SINGAPORE, May 6 (Reuters) - HSBC Holdings PLC has
filed a court application to place oil trader Zenrock
Commodities Trading Pte Ltd under judicial management over
non-payment of dues and other issues, four people familiar with
the matter said on Wednesday.
Zenrock is the latest Singapore-based commodities trading
firm whose finances have come under scrutiny as the collapse in
global oil prices amid a slump in consumption due to the
coronavirus pandemic ripples through the sector.
One of Asia's top oil traders, Singapore's Hin Leong Trading
Pte Ltd, was placed under the management of a court-appointed
supervisor late last month as it seeks to restructure billions
of dollars of debt.
HSBC applied to the Singapore High Court for Zenrock to be
placed under so-called judicial management, where a court
appoints an independent manager to run the affairs of a
financially distressed company in the place of existing
management. Such moves are often seen favourably by creditors.
The bank nominated accounting firm KPMG as the interim
judicial manager, pending a hearing of the judicial management
application, one of the sources said.
Besides HSBC, Zenrock has at least 10 other creditors
including Natixis SA, ING Groep, Credit
Agricole and Bank of China, three of the
sources said.
HSBC and KPMG declined to comment. Zenrock did not respond
to requests for comment. Natixis declined comment, while there
was no immediate response from the other banks.
Singapore-based Zenrock trades crude, oil products and
petrochemicals and has offices in Singapore, Shanghai and
Geneva.
Just late last month, the company issued a statement to
reassure clients that it was not under financial duress after
global oil and fuel prices slumped.
Zenrock was founded in Singapore in 2014 by a group of
traders including Xie Chun, Zenrock Commodities' president,
formerly from Unipec. Tony Lin, formerly Vitol's China head, is
a director at the company.
The company's revenues more than doubled to $6.15 billion in
2018, from $2.88 billion in the previous year, according to its
latest annual financial statement on Singapore's Accounting and
Corporate Regulatory Authority website.
Its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) also more than
doubled to $11.17 million in 2018, from $4.62 million in 2017.
In September 2018, Xie told Reuters in an interview that the
company expected trading volumes that year to rise to 9 million
tonnes of crude and oil products, up from 5.7 million tonnes in
2017.
(Reporting by Roslan Khasawneh, Jessica Jaganathan, Anshuman
Daga and Florence Tan; Editing by Neil Fullick and Richard
Pullin)
