Justice S Mohan: Opening Keynote Address at the 11th Asian Maritime Law Conference 2026

11th ASIAN MARITIME LAW CONFERENCE 2026

"In the Wake of Hin Leong Trading: Significant Maritime Decisions in Singapore"⁽¹⁾ 

Wednesday, 14 October 2026

The Honourable Justice S Mohan

Supreme Court of Singapore

Mr Leong Kah Wah, President of the Maritime Law Association of Singapore

Presidents, Vice-Presidents and representatives of the maritime law associations of Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, China and Bangladesh

Distinguished guests 

Ladies and gentlemen 

1. A very good morning to everyone. Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to the Maritime Law Association of Singapore for inviting me to deliver the opening address at this year’s Asian Maritime Law Conference. As some of you would know, the MLAS is an organisation close to my heart, having been an Exco member and a past President prior to my joining the Bench. I am extremely heartened to see the Asian Maritime Law Conference in its 11th run and still going strong as a premier maritime law event in Singapore. 

The subject of my address today is one which I believe to be of great relevance to the daily practice of many members of the shipping community: Over the next half an hour or so, I aim to canter through some of the recent notable maritime law decisions emanating from the Singapore courts and the potential impact that these decisions might have going forward. In a number of these decisions, the courts had to grapple with novel, untested issues arising in the context of established and familiar maritime concepts – thus, also fitting quite neatly within the overall theme of this year’s conference titled “Asian Maritime Law - Ancient Trade, Modern Issues”. 

2. To first place the decisions I intend to cover in their proper context, the prevalence and importance of admiralty and shipping law in Singapore’s jurisprudence has long reflected the reality of our position as one of the world’s principal nodes of maritime trade and commerce. This has allowed Singapore to build and cement its reputation as a leading forum for maritime disputes, with the decisions of our courts on such matters often carrying weight well beyond this tiny island state. 

3. The past five years or so have seen a proliferation of several important, even landmark decisions, on maritime and international trade law being decided by the Singapore courts. Most of them can be traced back to a single event – the collapse of one of Singapore’s largest independent oil traders, Hin Leong Trading (or “Hin Leong”) and its shipping arm Ocean Tanker. Hin Leong’s collapse sent shockwaves through the shipping and oil trading markets and perhaps unsurprisingly, as has been the case with past major corporate collapses in the shipping and oil trading industry, Hin Leong’s implosion spawned a wave of litigation on a plethora of issues. That wave, in turn, has provided fertile ground for development of the law. 

4. What I aim to do today is take stock of some of the more notable jurisprudence that has emerged out of the ensuing chaos following Hin Leong’s collapse. I will discuss five decisions that span three broad areas: first, the carriage of goods by sea; second, the sale and purchase of goods, namely oil, and the financing of oil trades; and third, the age-old tension between admiralty and insolvency law. 

5. But before examining these decisions, I must raise a caveat – as the courts in Singapore (and that includes myself), are  still in the midst of sorting out the debris left by Hin Leong in ongoing litigation – any views that I express today are in no way indicative of how these decisions would be treated in any ongoing or future cases. So for those who you here hoping to get a whiff of how I might be leaning, I am sorry to have to disappoint you.

I. The law on carriage of goods by sea: misdelivery and the ‘causation defence’ 

6. The first case I touch on concerns a perennial problem in the carriage of goods by sea: the delivery of cargo without production of the original bills of lading. The fundamental rule, commonly known as the presentation rule, is that the carrier is obliged to deliver the cargo carried only against presentation of the original bill of lading (or “BL”).⁽²⁾ But as many of you know, the reality is frequently less accommodating, and vessels (especially oil and product tankers) commonly arrive well before the BLs complete their journey through the banking chain. Due to commercial pressures, carriers are often instructed to release the cargo without the original bills being presented. The industry’s solution has been the letter of indemnity (or “LOI”): the carrier delivers against an LOI, usually from its charterer who may also be the seller of the cargo, and thereby re-allocating the legal risk of misdelivery to the parties to the underlying sale.⁽³⁾

7. This was the scenario facing the court in the case of The Maersk Katalin. In that case, Winson Oil had sold a cargo of gasoil to Hin Leong. At Winson Oil’s request, the shipowner/carrier discharged and delivered the cargo to Hin Leong without production of the original BLs but against an LOI issued by Winson Oil in favour of the carrier, which in this case was Maersk. Subsequently, Hin Leong applied to United Overseas Bank (or “UOB”) for a letter of credit (or “LC”) to finance its purchase of part of the cargo. UOB made payment under the LC on Winson Oil’s presentation of complying documents, which consisted of the commercial invoice and a payment LOI in lieu of the BLs. After Hin Leong declared insolvency, UOB obtained possession of the original BLs which were endorsed in UOB’s name, and sued the carrier Maersk for misdelivery. The claim was defended by the Maersk as the carrier under the BLs and by Winson Oil, who were permitted to appear as an intervener in the proceedings by reason of being the issuer of the LOI in favour of Maersk, and who were the party ultimately in the hot seat.

8. Among the litany of defences raised at first instance was what I term the “causation defence” which is what I will be focusing on. Essentially, the carrier’s argument was that the effective cause of UOB’s loss was not the carrier’s breach of contract  as contained in the BLs but UOB’s own financing arrangements with Hin Leong and their reliance on Hin Leong’s creditworthiness. The carrier contended that, counterfactually, UOB would have authorised the delivery of the cargo to Hin Leong without production of the original BLs in any event.⁽⁴⁾ Maersk and Winson Oil placed heavy reliance on the English courts’ decisions in The Sienna, where a similar causation defence had been accepted.

9. At first instance, the High Court rejected this argument, distinguishing between the facts in The Maersk Katalin and The Sienna.⁽⁵⁾ The carrier had neither pleaded nor advanced any submissions on the intermediate steps by which UOB would allegedly have come to authorise delivery without production of the BLs, and there was a dearth of evidence to establish the likelihood of those intermediate steps transpiring. The proposed counterfactual was therefore premised on layers of speculation and not evidence.⁽⁶⁾ In contrast, Fimbank, which was the claimant in The Sienna, had itself offered its views during the trial (through one of its witnesses) on what would have happened had the owners initially declined to deliver the cargo in the absence of the original BLs.⁽⁷⁾ There was therefore a concrete evidential basis by which the trial judge in The Sienna could assess the counterfactual in that case, which was absent in The Maersk Katalin. 

10. Dissatisfied, Maersk and Winson Oil appealed. But before the Court of Appeal, the only remaining argument raised by Maersk and Winson Oil was that UOB had no legal right to the cargo because it did not look to the BLs as security. The court found that Maersk had rightly abandoned the “causation defence” as UOB had not even become interested in the cargo at the time of misdelivery, since  Hin Leong had only applied for financing after the cargo had already been discharged and delivered.⁽⁸⁾ Ultimately, the appeal was dismissed.⁽⁹⁾  

11. Two broad points emerge from these decisions. First, a carrier that delivers against an LOI has contractual recourse against the LOI issuer but must ultimately still answer to the lawful holder of the original bills. Second, despite recent developments before the English courts which might have suggested the appearance of cracks in what has traditionally been thought to be a straightforward cast-iron claim, The Maersk Katalin reinforces the orthodox position that under Singapore law, a carrier will, in most situations, be found liable to the bill of lading holders for misdelivery should the carrier deliver the cargo without production of the original BLs. 

II. Legal issues relating to the sale of goods and trade finance

12. I turn next to two cases concerning issues arising from the financing and trading structures commonly used by commercial parties today in the oil trading industry. The two cases are UniCredit Bank AG v Glencore Singapore Pte Ltd (“UniCredit”) and Winson Oil Trading Pte Ltd v Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp Ltd (“Winson v OCBC”). Both are decisions by the Court of Appeal and, at first blush, it might appear that the decisions went in two different directions on seemingly similar facts. 

13. In the UniCredit case, UniCredit had issued an irrevocable LC to finance Hin Leong’s purchase of fuel oil from Glencore. Unbeknownst to UniCredit, Hin Leong had entered into a sale and buyback arrangement with Glencore in which it simultaneously agreed to sell the same goods back to Glencore.⁽¹⁰⁾ In accordance with the terms of the LC, UniCredit paid Glencore on presentation of complying documents, namely, Glencore’s commercial invoice and a payment LOI addressed to Hin Leong. After Hin Leong went into liquidation, UniCredit turned to Glencore for redress, asserting a claim in the tort of deceit, but its claims were wholly dismissed. On appeal, the court rejected UniCredit’s argument that the High Court had erred in dismissing its claim.⁽¹¹⁾

14. While numerous points were discussed and analysed by the Court of Appeal, my focus today is on the court’s treatment of the sale and buyback arrangements between Hin Leong and Glencore. The court found that this arrangement was entirely legitimate and not part of a larger scheme hatched by Glencore, or between Glencore and Hin Leong, to defraud UniCredit. The structure of the arrangement as a simultaneous sell and buy-back was not determinative of whether the contracts between Hin Leong and Glencore were shams; instead, the court looked to the overall purpose of the transaction and also considered if the contractual rights and obligations under the sale documentation genuinely existed. 

15. The court found that the transaction had a legitimate commercial purpose: and that was to enable Glencore to optimise its working capital. The evidence demonstrated that in order to purchase the goods from the original seller, Glencore had borrowed funds from a related company at a notional interest rate of about 3.7 to 3.8%. To reduce the interest payable, Glencore arranged to sell and repurchase the goods from Hin Leong and financed its repurchase with a separate bank loan at a lower effective interest rate of 2.22%.⁽¹²⁾

16. Going beyond the overall purpose of the transaction, the court also noted that Glencore had genuinely wanted to have title in time to transfer it to Hin Leong. The arrangement was therefore not a sham agreement involving the trade of fictitious goods.⁽¹³⁾ UniCredit therefore stands as authority that a circular trade is not, without more, a sham or fraudulent transaction. 

17. However, the Court of Appeal’s subsequent decision in Winson Oil v OCBC exemplifies how circular trades, under certain circumstances, may nevertheless raise “red flags”. The dispute in that case centred around the final leg of a circular trade involving 3 parties - Hin Leong, Trafigura and Winson Oil. The case was concerned with the sale from Winson Oil back to Hin Leong. Standard Chartered Bank and OCBC had issued LCs in favour of Winson to finance Hin Leong for the Winson-Hin Leong sale, but subsequently refused to pay Winson Oil under the LCs, contending that no cargo had been shipped and that the copy BLs purportedly evidencing such shipment were forgeries. 

18. The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision dismissing Winson Oil’s claim, finding that the fraud exception to the principle of the autonomy of letters of credit had been made out. The court held that Winson Oil had, in its payment LOIs, fraudulently represented that there were valid BLs for the Winson-Hin Leong leg of the sale and actual cargoes shipped, despite a  number of red flags in the transaction. In particular, while the Court of Appeal accepted that a pre-structured circular transaction was not necessarily a sham,⁽¹⁴⁾ what made the particular circular trade unusual was the use of payment LOIs in a transaction where all the relevant parties were based in Singapore. The (relatively close) geographical locations of the parties should and would have made possible the movement of and production of the original BLs. Further, considering that the carrier in this case was Ocean Tanker, a Hin Leong related company, the significant monetary value of the transaction and the availability of non-negotiable copy BLs, Winson Oil would have been expected to make inquiries as to why the original BLs were unavailable.⁽¹⁵⁾

19. Viewing both cases in the round, I would suggest that they demonstrate the Singapore courts’ commercially and fact-sensitive approaches to circular trades. As recognised by the Court of Appeal, circular trades are not per se unusual in the oil trading market, and there may be legitimate, strategic or financial reasons for a trader to buy and resell the same cargo.⁽¹⁶⁾ Nevertheless, a pre-structured circular trade forms part of the overall picture that the court assesses to determine if a party honestly believed the representations it made in the underlying transactional documents, including in particular payment LOIs that are also prevalent in the oil trading ecosystem. In a nutshell, it is not a case of one size fits all but very much dependent on the facts in play.

III. The intersection between the insolvency and admiralty regimes 

20. Finally, I turn to address a number of cases that lie at the intersection of the insolvency and admiralty law regimes. As was observed extra-judicially by my former colleague on the Bench Justice Steven Chong in his keynote address in 2018 to the Judicial Insolvency Network, historically, these two legal regimes developed independently of each other,⁽¹⁷⁾ and thus, tension between them is perhaps inevitable. Admiralty law, which in the common law world developed around the admiralty action in rem, effectively ringfences ships and other maritime property and affords priority satisfaction of certain maritime claimants over other non-admiralty creditors. By contrast, insolvency law is concerned with the collective administration of assets for the benefit of creditors as a whole, subject to a statutory scheme of priorities.⁽¹⁸⁾  Thus, it is unsurprising that the collapse of the Hin Leong group provided fertile ground for disputes which straddled both regimes. In the remaining time, I will cover two decisions that, as was artfully put by the Court of Appeal, lay at the “perilous strait between the laws of insolvency and admiralty”.⁽¹⁹⁾

21. The first case is Natixis v Seshadri Rajagopalan (“Natixis”). Natixis concerned applications by three banks that had provided inventory financing to Hin Leong against, among others, pledges of BLs purportedly relating to cargo shipped on board the floating storage vessel “Chang Bai San”. The owner of the vessel – which was a subsidiary of Hin Leong’s related company – had gone into judicial management.  

22. The banks had commenced various admiralty actions in rem against the vessel in respect of claims for misdelivery and/or loss of cargo. Importantly, however, despite having issued admiralty writs in rem in Singapore against the vessel, none of the banks arrested the vessel when she was in Singapore. The vessel subsequently proceeded to Gibraltar where she was then arrested by her mortgagee and eventually sold by way of a judicial sale by the Gibraltar court – under the law of Gibraltar, the judicial sale extinguished all liens and encumbrances existing against the vessel. Another relevant aspect of the case is that by the time the vessel left Singapore for Gibraltar, the demise charter that was in place between the shipowning company and Ocean Tanker was terminated. As a result, it was not possible for the banks to issue fresh admiralty proceedings in Gibraltar or be entitled to claim any of the sale proceeds via the Gibraltarian admiralty process as they no longer had any right to proceed in rem. It subsequently emerged from the evidence that the judicial managers and the mortgagee had discussed and agreed beforehand to the vessel sailing to Gibraltar, for her to be arrested by the mortgagee in Gibraltar and eventually sold there via a judicial sale. Upon discovering this, the banks contended that the judicial managers of the shipowning company should have applied under s 100(2) of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (“IRDA”) for authorisation to proceed with the planned arrest and judicial sale of the vessel in Gibraltar as if she was not subject to security, and that in failing to do so, the judicial managers, as officers of the court, had acted unfairly and in circumstances which warranted the court’s intervention to set things right.

23. For context, s 100(2) of IRDA is a statutory exception to the nemo dat rule that allows a judicial manager, provided a number of conditions are met,⁽²⁰⁾ to obtain the court’s authorisation to dispose of a property that is subject to a security “as if the property were not subject to the security”.⁽²¹⁾ In order to succeed in their applications, the banks  needed to demonstrate a number of things: first, that they held security upon the issuance of their admiralty writs in rem against the vessel; second, that this security interest fell within the scope of s 100(2) of the IRDA; third, that the arrest and judicial sale in Gibraltar constituted a disposal of the vessel by the judicial managers; and fourth, that the judicial managers had acted unfairly.⁽²²⁾ The Court of Appeal agreed with the judge below and found that none of these requirements were satisfied on the facts. 

24. The dispositive point identified by the Court of Appeal was that the judicial sale of the vessel in Gibraltar was not a “disposal” of the vessel by the judicial managers.⁽²³⁾ For one, a judicial sale, by its very nature, could not constitute a “disposal” under s 100(2). For another, the arrest and judicial sale by the mortgagee constituted the enforcement by the mortgagee of its security rather than a disposal by the judicial managers. 

25. While that conclusion was sufficient to dispose of the appeal, the court nevertheless embarked on an instructive discussion as to whether an admiralty in rem claimant holds “security” in a vessel within the meaning of s 100 of the IRDA simply by virtue of having issued a writ in rem against the vessel.⁽²⁴⁾ The court explained, reaffirming established admiralty caselaw, that the mere commencement of an admiralty action in rem does not, by itself, confer a security interest recognised under s 100.⁽²⁵⁾ Rather, it is only upon arresting the ship concerned that a claimant acquires security over the vessel.⁽²⁶⁾ As a matter of principle, the statutory lien that arises upon the issuance an in rem writ merely affords the claimant an antecedent right to obtain security rather than a security interest in itself.⁽²⁷⁾  

26. A point of particular interest in this case is the court’s observation that the statutory lien that arises upon the issuance of an in rem writ is not the type of “security” contemplated under s 100(2) of the IRDA. This is due to a particularly unique quality of the statutory lien, which is familiar to shipping lawyers: because a single writ in rem may be issued against multiple vessels, a statutory lien is capable of attaching to numerous vessels at once simply by listing them in one writ. Coupled with the non-registrable and non-consensual nature of the statutory lien created by the issuance of the in rem writ, the court found that it could not constitute a security interest without cutting against the policies underpinning insolvency law.⁽²⁸⁾

27. Natixis was subsequently considered by the High Court in the case of Re Da Shun Shipping (Pte) Ltd (“Da Shun”). Da Shun was a one-ship company that owned the vessel “Sea Latitude”. Da Shun’s sister company, An Wei Shipping Pte Ltd (“An Wei”), was also a one-ship company that owned the vessel “Sea Horizon”. Da Shun and An Wei were joint and several borrowers under a term loan facility with the Bank of America (“BoFA”). As is common, the loan facility and the borrowers’ joint and several liability were secured by cross-collateralised mortgages granted to BofA over both vessels. Separately, HSBC and Societe Generale, defined in the case as the “Writ Claimants”, had each filed an admiralty action in rem in Singapore against the Sea Latitude in relation to their respective claims for misdelivery of cargo. 

28. After Da Shun had entered into judicial management, its judicial managers sought to sell the Sea Latitude via a private sale. But the difficulty was obvious: any prospective purchaser would be put off by a ship that faced the likelihood of being arrested in Singapore by the Writ Claimants. The judicial managers and the Writ Claimants eventually reached an agreement whereby the judicial managers would apply to court under s 100(2) of IRDA for an order allowing them to dispose of the Sea Latitude as if she was not subject to security. BofA as the mortgagee and the Writ Claimants agreed that they would not object to the application. The Writ Claimants also agreed not to arrest the Vessel for a period of time, and to discontinue the actions in rem they had each commenced. The order under s 100 was granted by the High Court as a consent order. The s 100 Order also recorded the parties’ agreement on how the sale proceeds were to be applied. In particular, the balance proceeds (after paying BofA’s remaining claim and certain costs and expenses) were to be paid into court as security for the Writ Claimants’ claims, and to be distributed to the Writ Claimants following the determination of their claims. In turn, the Writ Claimants discontinued their respective in rem actions.⁽²⁹⁾ The vessel was eventually sold via a private sale, BofA’s claim was satisfied in full and the balance sale proceeds were paid into court. For completeness, the aggregate monetary value of the claims of HSBC and SocGen far exceeded the remaining sale proceeds.

29. Subsequently, the Writ Claimants’ entitlement and priority to the balance sale proceeds was challenged by the liquidators of An Wei. An Wei relied on, among others, principles of unjust enrichment and equitable subrogation to assert that as a co-borrower with Da Shun and who paid more than its equal share of the outstanding loan (via the sale of its own vessel the Sea Horizon), An Wei was entitled by way of subrogation to step into the shoes of BofA as the mortgagee of the Sea Latitude and thereby enjoy the same secured creditor status as BofA. In that way, An Wei sought to lay claim to the remaining sale proceeds in priority to the Writ Claimants. 

30. I do not propose to discuss the aspects of the case or the court’s analysis pertaining to An Wei’s underlying claim. Instead, and of greater relevance today is An Wei’s argument, relying on the Natixis case, that the Writ Claimants, not having arrested the Vessel, held no security or security interest in the balance proceeds and therefore had no priority entitlement under s 100(2) of the IRDA. An Wei further argued that the s 100 Order could not confer on the Writ Claimants any security where none had previously existed.⁽³⁰⁾

31. The High Court rejected An Wei’s arguments.⁽³¹⁾ Applying principles of contractual interpretation, the court found that the s 100 Order constituted or evidenced Da Shun’s agreement, as the shipowner, to provide security to the Writ Claimants for their claims.⁽³²⁾ As such, this was not a case where the Writ Claimants had to rely on the arrest of the vessel to obtain security. There was already in place an agreement by the shipowner to provide security to the Writ Claimants, as reflected in the express wording of the s 100 Order.⁽³³⁾ Thus, unlike Natixis, the court held that it was immaterial that the Writ Claimants in Da Shun had not arrested the vessel. Once the vessel was sold and the remaining sale proceeds paid into court, the agreement by Da Shun to furnish security to the Writ Claimants was consummated. The court found that the agreement that Da Shun, BofA and the Writ Claimants had reached and as reflected in the terms of the s 100 order was one which sought to replicate, as closely as possible, a scenario where the vessel had in fact been arrested and judicially sold in Singapore. 

32. Da Shun is a neat illustration of an instance where the court had to apply well established principles of admiralty law on provision of security to an unusual fact pattern and with s 100 of the IRDA overlaid, in order to arrive at a decision that avoided a collision between admiralty and insolvency law. 

IV. Conclusion

33. To conclude, while Hin Leong's collapse created a storm that shook Singapore's commercial landscape, the litigation it spawned could, in many ways, be said to be a silver lining for the development of maritime law in Singapore. The decisions I have touched on today cut across fundamental principles of maritime law, contract, documentary credits, and the perennial tug-of-war between admiralty and insolvency law — and these are merely a selection of the more notable cases that have surfaced so far, with more still navigating their way through the courts. But the broader lesson is this: while maritime law may be as ancient in its origins as maritime trade, it is far from fossilised. If anything, Hin Leong’s demise has reminded us that to this day, maritime law remains very much a living, breathing, and occasionally even turbulent body of law.  

34. On that note, all that remains is for me to wish all of you a successful and thought-provoking conference. Thank you.