China Evergrande Group was ordered to be liquidated by a Hong Kong court, a stunning legal coda for the world’s most-indebted property developer.
A wind-up could end up in management being replaced and addressing some issues, Judge Linda Chan said in the city’s High Court on Monday morning.
The ruling on Monday cements the homebuilder, carrying 2.39 trillion yuan ($333 billion) of liabilities, as the most prominent symbol so far of China’s real estate crisis, which has crimped economic growth and hurt consumer confidence. The order is also likely to send ripples through China’s financial system at a time when policymakers are trying to stem a stock market rout.
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Evergrande, which first defaulted on a dollar bond in December 2021, was for a time in the last decade the country’s largest builder by sales. The petition for liquidation was filed in June 2022 by Top Shine Global Limited of Intershore Consult (Samoa) Ltd., which was a strategic investor in the homebuilder’s online sales platform.
Trading in Evergrande shares was suspended on Monday morning after the stock tumbled 21%, giving it a market value of just HK$2.15 billion ($275 million).
Judge Chan, who has presided over a string of developer hearings and ordered the liquidation of one last year, will conduct the hearing on a potential regulating order at 2:30pm Monday, according to information on the city’s judiciary website. Such orders mean that the court would regulate the winding-up process, potentially including appointing a liquidator.
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But the liquidator is likely to face a daunting process in dealing with Chinese developers. Most Evergrande projects are operated by local units, which could be hard for the offshore liquidator to seize. And construction work, housing delivery and other activities in mainland China likely will continue while the process unfolds.
The property market has continued to sag even as China introduced a slew of new measures to stem sinking prices and sluggish demand.
Evergrande’s winding-up petition case number is HCCW 220/2022.
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