Evergrande faces renewed liquidation risk in wind-up hearing
CHINA Evergrande Group will once again try to fend off liquidation at court hearings in Hong Kong on Monday (Jan 29).
Eight weeks after the debt-laden property developer won a surprise reprieve in the long-running lawsuit, Evergrande has made little progress towards clinching a restructuring agreement with creditors.
Any order to wind up Evergrande, which has about US$327 billion in liabilities, will likely send ripples through China’s financial system at a time when policymakers are trying to stem a stock market rout. It would also further weaken confidence in the housing industry, which is in a persistent slump that’s dragging on the world’s second-largest economy.
In addition to the case scheduled to be heard at 9.30 am, Judge Linda Chan will conduct a rare hearing on a possible “regulating order” at 2.30 pm, according to information on the city’s judiciary website. Such orders mean the court would regulate the winding-up process, potentially including appointing a liquidator.
China has been releasing new measures to shore up the struggling property sector, including drafting a list of builders that would be eligible for funding support. But there is little indication that Evergrande has benefited at all, more than two years after its default.
In the absence of any last-minute deal with bondholders, Evergrande’s fate may rest on the status of the parties seeking a winding-up order from the court.
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The December hearing was adjourned after the original petitioner, Top Shine Global Limited of Intershore Consult (Samoa), decided not to push for an immediate liquidation. Now a key bondholder group plans to join the petition, Reuters reported on Jan 24, citing people familiar with the matter.
Lawyers for the ad hoc group of bondholders, which has said it holds more than US$6 billion of the builder’s roughly US$19 billion of offshore notes, told reporters after last month’s hearing that it will “likely” step in if the original petitioner were to walk away.
Any change in the stance of the group, which had previously opposed liquidation, would make it much harder for Evergrande to convince the court that it is making progress with creditors on reaching a concrete debt restructuring plan.
The poster child of China’s real estate debt crisis is trying to rescue the plan since a slew of setbacks derailed the process in recent months. The Shenzhen-based developer scrapped creditor meetings at the last minute in late September. In the same month, its founder and chairman Hui Ka Yan was suspected of committing crimes and placed under police control.
Offshore creditors are demanding controlling stakes in the equity of Evergrande as well as its two Hong Kong subsidiaries – Evergrande Property Services Group and China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group – as part of the debt discussions, Bloomberg News reported in December.
Evergrande had earlier proposed offering 17.8 per cent of the parent and 30 per cent of each of the subsidiaries.
Top Shine, a strategic investor in the homebuilder’s online sales platform, filed the wind-up petition in June 2022. The case subsequently became a consolidated class action for other frustrated creditors.
After repeated postponements, Judge Chan called an adjournment in October the “final” one, only to delay a decision again in December when Top Shine balked.
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