The four onshore fuel storage facilities in Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Shanghai, and Yantai, were the crown jewels of Titan's operations and after it ran into problems, liquidators sold them to Warburg Pincus and its partner SouthernPec. They were then to sell the assets back, together with Warburg's preference shares claim on StorageCo, the company holding the storage tank assets, to Guangdong Zhenrong for $350m, giving them a tidy $65m profit.
Reports quoted sources as saying that on the day the deal was meant to be closed in December, nobody from Warburg and SouthernPec showed up and they have been using trivial issues since then not to complete the deal. Meanwhile payment funds have been sitting in an escrow account since December,
It is suspected that the partners may have received a better offer from a third party, believed likely to be another state-backed oil firm.
The case is pending arbitration at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre but no hearing date has been set.
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