SINGAPORE -- To many Singapore observers, the most unsettling aspect of the collapse of Hin Leong Trading was not the speed with which volatile markets pushed one of Asia's biggest private oil traders $4 billion into the red.
More worrying was the admission from the company's billionaire founder Lim Oon Kuin, one of Singapore's most respected business leaders, that he had directed his finance department not to disclose $800 million worth of trading losses.