Speculation is mounting that Genting Berhad patriarch Lim Kok Thay could be readying to launch a new cruise line after companies linked to him registered the name “Resorts World Cruises” in Singapore.
According to The Straits Times, Resorts World Cruises was incorporated on 9 March with an entity called Two Trees Family Holdings listed as its shareholder. Two Trees, itself incorporated in March 2021, lists Lim, his son Lim Keong Hui and Gerard Lim Ewe Keng as directors.
While there is little other public information available about the new company, its registration comes just over three months after provisional liquidators were appointed to Lim’s global cruise ship company, Genting Hong Kong, and two months since Genting Hong Kong’s Asian-based cruise line, Dream Cruises, halted sailings out of Singapore.
It was reported in February that at least half of Dream Cruises’ Singapore based staff had been let go.
Lim, who personally owns 75% of Genting Hong Kong, stepped down as the company’s Chairman and CEO in late January, however Bloomberg reported in mid-February that Lim was one of several investors to have expressed interest in purchasing Global Dream – the unfinished cruise ship currently sitting dormant at Genting Hong Kong’s bankrupt shipbuilding yard in Germany.
Measuring 342 meters in length, Global Dream had promised to be the world’s largest cruise liner by passenger capacity before construction ground to a halt in January when the shipyards filed for insolvency.
Provisional liquidators were appointed to Genting Hong Kong due to debts totalling almost US$2.8 billion. The company had only last year finalized a series of agreements with those creditors for the granting new loans and extensions to maturities, however it defaulted in January when unable to access US$88 million in funding from the German government.
Trading in Genting Hong Kong shares has been suspended since 18 January 2022.
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