The company has humble beginnings. Lim started off with little more than a fishing boat supplying diesel to other vessels. More comfortable speaking his native dialect of Hokkien than English or Mandarin, he was one of the first traders outside China to start doing business with the mainland, shipping fuel to southern Chinese provinces since the 1980s.Hin Leong grew in parallel with Asia’s recovery after the 1997-98 economic crisis. As Indonesia, Malaysia and others rebounded, so did demand for diesel and fuel oil, the staples in which Hin Leong traded. When China’s growth accelerated over the following decades, more ships stopped in Singapore to take on fuel, and Hin Leong became a giant of the industry, an empire with stakes in an oil terminal and tanks capable of holding millions of barrels of oil.Its domination of the market gave rise to the quip that anyone wanting to start a ship fuel business in Singapore had better get an “OK” from OK Lim’s company. His trading plays, often bullish, and more often than not targeting either fuel oil or diesel became the stuff of legend in the city. While others stumbled, Lim appeared to always persevere.