Evergrande to delist in milestone for China housing crisis
The Guangzhou-based company said the stock exchange has decided to cancel its listing, according to a filing to the Hong Kong bourse on August 12. The shares will be removed on Aug. 25 and the company won't apply for a review of the exchange's decision, it added.
Evergrande's collapse was by far the biggest in a crisis that dragged down China's economic growth and led to a record spate of distress among builders. The company, which first defaulted on a dollar bond in December 2021, was once the country's largest developer by sales, and was worth more than $50 billion in 2017 at its peak.
In a separate filing on August 12, court-appointed liquidators said Evergrande's debt load is far bigger than earlier estimated, and any 'holistic' restructuring is out of reach.
The clock started ticking for the delisting in late January last year, when Evergrande received a liquidation order from a Hong Kong court and trading of its shares was suspended. It has remained halted since then, having failed to meet requirements for a resumption of trading. In Hong Kong, a stock can be delisted if suspension lasts 18 months or longer.
The move will further diminish hopes for any recovery for Evergrande's shareholders, who have seen the value of their investment evaporate in recent years.
Shares of Evergrande last traded at less than 20 Hong Kong cents on Jan. 29, 2024, giving it a market value of HK$2.15 billion ($274 million). The stock has had a low free float, with its founder Hui Ka Yan owning a roughly 60% stake.
'Whether or not there's a delisting, Evergrande's shareholders will likely have to prepare for near-total loss,' Kristy Hung, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, said before the announcement. 'The developer's liquidation and substantial claims from creditors who are ahead in the order suggests equity holders face material risk of getting nothing.'
Delisting risks
Several other Chinese developers face similar delisting risks, according to the latest tally by the bourse. They include mid-sized builders Modern Land (China) Co., which has been suspended for more than 16 months, and Dexin China Holdings Co., which received a liquidation order in June last year.
To resume trading, some of them will have to file more updated audited results, have winding-up petitions withdrawn or dismissed, or have any liquidators discharged.
'The golden era of real estate is gone,' said Glen Ho, Asia-Pacific contingency planning and insolvency leader at Deloitte. 'The business model for builders has totally changed.'
Evergrande still has two other units listed in Hong Kong — a property service provider and an electric vehicle maker. China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Ltd., which has been suspended since April, could be delisted, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Andrew Chan and Daniel Fan wrote in a recent note.
Following its 2009 listing under the ticker 3333, Evergrande rose to become one of China's hottest stocks in its heyday, powering founder and chairman Hui to become Asia's second-richest person. Much of Hui's known wealth was derived from his controlling stake in Evergrande and the cash dividends he received from the company.
Beijing's crackdown on the property sector since 2020 capped the developer's borrowing capacity, effectively cutting it off from credit markets. Following failed restructuring attempts, Evergrande was given a winding-up order in Hong Kong in 2024. Later that year, a mainland Chinese court accepted a liquidation application filed against one of its major onshore units.
Evergrande's debt pile amounts to $45 billion, according to the developer's court-appointed liquidators.
The company is facing 187 debt claims, with the total amount far exceeding the $27.5 billion of liabilities disclosed in its financial statement in December 2022, the liquidators said in a progress report released on Tuesday. The new figure isn't to be taken as final since additional claims could emerge and all are subject to formal review.
The liquidators said the realization of assets has so far been 'modest' at $255 million. Some $167 million has been 'upstreamed' and linked to Evergrande. Stakeholders shouldn't assume that all of the money will be available to the company due to complex ownership structures, they said.
--With assistance from Venus Feng, Pearl Liu, David Hall and Foster Wong.
(Updates with details of debt load from fourth paragraph)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hans India
13 minutes ago
- Hans India
PerPlexing Google...Perplexity makes surprise $34.5bn bid for Chrome
Perplexity, an AI company headed by Indian-origin CEO Aravind Srinivas, made headlines when it made a bold move to acquire Google Chrome for as much as $34.5 billion. Perplexity is no stranger to making such bold offers. In January, it made a similar one for TikTok US and had offered to merge with the video-making platform, amid concerns in America about TikTok's Chinese ownership. But does Perplexity have the kind of money to acquire Google Chrome for $34.5 billion? The all-cash offer made by Aravind Srinivas to acquire Chrome from Sundar Pichai's Alphabet was far beyond Perplexity's own valuation. Perplexity AI Inc, whose artificial intelligence-powered search engine competes with Google, was valued at $18 billion in July after raising fresh capital. The company brought in $100 million with the financing, Bloomberg reported, quoting a person familiar with the matter. This deal was an extension of a previous round a few months ago that valued the company at $14 billion, according to the report. Perplexity, founded by Srinivas in 2022, has raised around $1 billion in funding so far from investors, including Nvidia and Japan's SoftBank. However, Perplexity did not comment on how exactly it plans to buy Google Chrome. Multiple funds have offered to finance the deal in full, Perplexity said, without naming the funds. Perplexity already has an AI browser, Comet, that can perform certain tasks on a user's behalf and buying Chrome would allow it to tap the browser's more than three billion users. Google has, however, not offered Chrome up for sale as it plans to challenge a US court ruling last year that found it held an unlawful monopoly in online search. Chrome has been facing regulatory pressure amid findings of its monopoly in the industry, and companies like OpenAI, Yahoo and private-equity firm Apollo Global Management have also expressed interest to buy the browser.
Hindustan Times
13 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
S Jaishankar to meet Russian counterpart after China foreign min's India visit
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi is set to visit India next week for talks on the border issue, days before external affairs minister S Jaishankar travels to Moscow for a trade and economic dialogue with his counterpart Sergey Lavrov, with both meetings crucial for New Delhi's ties with Beijing and Moscow amid strains in the relationship with Washington. Within days of Wang's visit, Jaishankar will travel to Moscow during August 21-23 for talks with Lavrov.(PTI File Photo) Wang is expected to be in New Delhi on August 18 for talks with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval under the mechanism of Special Representatives for the border issue, people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity. This will be a follow-up to Doval's trip to Beijing last December and part of preparations for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to China at the end of this month for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, they said. A meeting between Wang and Jaishankar is not being ruled out, the people said. Within days of Wang's visit, Jaishankar will travel to Moscow during August 21-23 for talks with Lavrov and to co-chair a meeting of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC), they said. This is the main mechanism overseeing trade and economic cooperation between the two sides and the meeting will be an opportunity to discuss matters such as the impact of US President Donald Trump's punitive tariff on India's purchases of Russian crude, the people said. The visits by Wang and Jaishankar are yet to be formally announced by China or India, though preparations have been underway for quite some time, the people said. Talks in the Special Representatives format resumed after Modi and President Xi Jinping met in the Russian city of Kazan on October 23 last year – two days after India and China reached an understanding on ending the military standoff on the Line of Actual Control – and agreed to revive several mechanisms to normalise bilateral ties and address the long-festering border dispute. However, both visits have assumed greater significance in light of a downturn in India-US relations in recent weeks on trade-related issues, primarily due to Trump slapping a tariff on Indian goods and an additional penalty for Russian oil purchases. The two Special Representatives are expected to consider confidence-building measures to bolster peace and tranquillity in the border areas and to take forward efforts aimed at seeking a mutually acceptable framework for settling the border issue, the people said. At their last meeting in December, Doval and Wang had 'resolved to inject more vitality into this process', according to an Indian readout. There have been several signs of a thaw in India-China ties following the chill caused by the border face-off, which saw both sides amassing nearly 50,000 troops each in Ladakh sector of LAC. In April, the two sides resumed the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra to the Tibet region after a gap of five years, and this was followed by India resuming tourist visas for Chinese nationals in July. India and China are also in advanced negotiations on resuming direct flights and trade through selected border posts, and there has been 'forward movement' on restrictions imposed by China on fertiliser exports to India. The Special Representatives are also expected to review cross-border cooperation and data-sharing on cross-border rivers. India's concerns about China's construction of what is set to be the world's largest hydropower dam on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra river too could figure in the talks, the people said. The Indian side formally raised the construction of the $167-billion dam on Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet with China and called for transparency and consultations on the project. Wang's meetings in New Delhi will also prepare the grounds for PM Modi's planned visit to China to participate in the SCO Summit in Tianjin on August 31 and September 1. Modi is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Xi on the margins of the summit, the people said. On Wednesday, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Alexey Fadeev confirmed Jaishankar will hold talks with Lavrov on August 21 before participating in the 26th session of the IRIGC-TEC. The trade and economic dialogue is co-chaired by Jaishankar and Russian first deputy prime minister Denis Manturov, and it was last held in New Delhi in November 2024. The upcoming dialogue will be an opportunity for India to discuss various trade-related issues, including the current imbalance in trade and greater trade settlement in national currencies in the face of Western sanctions and tariffs, the people said. India-Russia trade reached a record high of $68.7 billion in FY 2024-25, though Indian exports accounted for only $4.88 billion. India has repeatedly raised issues such as greater access to Russian markets and diversification of trade, which has been dominated by increased uptake of Russian crude in the past three years. As part of measures to bolster rupee-ruble trade, the Reserve Bank of India on August 5 allowed authorised dealer (AD) category-1 banks to open special rupee vostro accounts for their foreign correspondent banks, and this was followed a week later by the easing of rules to allow funds in these accounts to be invested in government securities and treasury bills. The meeting of the IRIGC-TEC will be followed by a meeting of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Military Technical Cooperation (IRIGC-MTC), for which the Russian defence minister will travel to New Delhi, the people said. The meeting of these bodies is part of preparations for a planned visit to India by President Vladimir Putin for the annual bilateral summit later this year.
Mint
13 minutes ago
- Mint
India-China: A thaw is in the air
While a cross-Himalayan thaw seems to have begun setting in since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October on the sidelines of the Brics summit, US President Donald Trump's tariff tirade may be giving India's ties with China a sudden upswing. Both have eased curbs placed on each other. Also Read: Nitin Pai: India should craft a calibrated response to China's Yarlung dam project Beijing, for instance, has restarted fertilizer supplies and New Delhi has begun issuing visas to Chinese visitors. Now, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi is set to visit India next week for talks with national security advisor Ajit Doval, before the two heads of state possibly meet at the SCO summit in China a few weeks later. Also Read: It's time for India's export strategy to converge its US and China tracks The signs are unmissable. Progress may be incremental but is crucial for at least trade ties to achieve normalcy after the Galwan clash of 2020. Perhaps India's investment restrictions will be eased too, duly calibrated to cover security concerns. Also Read: China's baby subsidies are tiny but could drive domestic consumption Such a patch-up mustn't be read as an Indian Brics tilt, let alone support for any coalition against the US. If anything, it would only assert India's geopolitical neutrality at a time of fraught world affairs. Across the globe, hard-nosed calculations are being made. And business is business.
