TWO creditors of China’s Guangzhou R&F Properties have sued the property developer to seek a bankruptcy restructuring, notices in an official database showed, deploying a rare court tactic against a mid-sized company of its kind.

While many developers, including R&F, have faced legal action by creditors for non-repayment, such restructuring requests to Chinese courts are uncommon, as government officials usually step in to mediate, developers and lawyers said.

Many of them, however, face winding-up petitions in Hong Kong and overseas jurisdictions.

Wednesday’s notices showed that Guangdong Xiangyi Trading and Guangzhou Guangfeng Concrete filed the bankruptcy restructuring applications in the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court, but gave no further details.

The creditor companies could not immediately be reached for comment.

R&F, which ranked No 20 in China in 2020 before the sector slipped into a debt crisis the following year, also owned several projects overseas, in places such as Britain and Malaysia before its liquidity problems.

A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU

Tuesday, 12 pm

Property Insights

Get an exclusive analysis of real estate and property news in Singapore and beyond.

Sign Up

Media, citing company database portals, have reported that the courts have so far ordered the freezing of a dozen assets of the developer.

R&F did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The developer, which has sought to extend its debts onshore, also completed a scheme offshore last year to exchange its US dollar bonds maturing through 2024.

The database on which the notices appeared is formally known as the National Enterprise Bankruptcy Information Disclosure Platform. REUTERS