Vanke’s former chairman Yu Liang resigns from struggling developer

[HONG KONG] China Vanke’s Yu Liang, who was chairman of the company until taking on lesser responsibilities last January, has resigned from all roles at the embattled property developer.

Yu, an executive director at Vanke for the past year, resigned due to reaching the age of retirement, Vanke said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Thursday (Jan 8). He will no longer hold any position at the developer.

The change comes as Vanke races to win support from investors to delay some of its bond repayments, a move that would give it a respite from its mounting debt problems.

Bondholders have given the Shenzhen-based builder a reprieve through late January, but rejected its initial requests to extend bond principal repayments by 12 months.

Yu, a Peking University graduate who was born in 1965, joined Vanke in 1990, two years after the developer began to transform itself from a trading firm into a real estate juggernaut. He took over Vanke’s chairman role in 2017 after founder Wang Shi stepped down in the wake of an ownership tussle.

In January last year, Yu resigned from the chairman role when Vanke’s largest shareholder Shenzhen Metro Group stepped in. BLOOMBERG