Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas), the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and the founding Lim family of Yinson Holdings Bhd (KL:YINSON) are reportedly in talks to take the oil-and-gas company private, according to sources.
The three parties are said to be forming a consortium to buy out Yinson, which owns one of the world’s largest fleets of floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, according to people familiar with the matter. A deal could be announced soon.
Petronas and the Lim family did not respond to requests for comment from The Edge, while the EPF declined to comment.
Yinson currently operates nine floating assets, with two more on order across Southeast Asia, South America and Africa. The company’s executive chairman, Lim Han Weng, and his family hold a 27.68% stake in the firm, while the EPF owns 17.09%.
Another substantial shareholder is Retirement Fund Inc, the pension fund for civil servants better known as KWAP, which holds 6.84% of Yinson.
Petronas also runs its own FPSO business through MISC Bhd (KL:MISC). The 51%-owned unit operates six FPSOs, five floating storage and offloading vessels, and one floating production and storage facility across Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil.
In 2024, MISC held talks with Bumi Armada Bhd (KL:ARMADA), which operates seven assets, to merge their respective FPSO businesses. The proposal was mutually called off in August 2025 after both parties concluded it would not fully achieve their intended objectives.
Yinson has previously featured in reports over potential privatisation. In June 2025, the company said its major shareholders were in exploratory discussions with “various parties with reference to potential corporate proposals regarding their shareholdings.”
At the time, reports indicated that the Lim family was in talks with New York-based investment firm Stonepeak Partners to take the company private. Those plans, however, were withdrawn earlier this year.
Beyond its FPSO operations, Yinson also owns renewable energy assets with a combined 557-megawatt capacity currently in operation, along with another 148 megawatts under construction across India, Peru and New Zealand. The company additionally operates electric vehicle charging stations in Malaysia and Singapore.
Yinson, which posted a net profit of RM683 million and revenue of RM5.4 billion for the financial year ended Jan 31, 2026 (FY2026), first entered the FPSO business in 2011 in Vietnam, where it builds and leases out floating vessels used in offshore oil and gas production.
The company became a major FPSO player in mid-2013 after acquiring Norwegian FPSO firm Fred Olsen Production ASA for RM551.3 million, and now holds stakes in offshore assets across Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, Malaysia and Vietnam.
The EPF, which manages the retirement savings of Malaysia’s private sector employees, emerged as a major shareholder of Yinson in 2015 — the same year the company secured its first major contract with Italian oil major Eni for the supply of an FPSO vessel in Ghana, worth US$2.54 billion.
Shares of Yinson closed at RM2.22 on Thursday, giving the company a market capitalisation of RM7.14 billion.
