HONG KONG: Shares in heavily indebted China Evergrande Group were taken off the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday (Aug 25), capping a grim reversal of fortune for the once-booming property developer.
A committee at the bourse had decided earlier this month to cancel Evergrande’s listing after it failed to meet a July deadline to resume trading – suspended since early last year.
The delisting on Monday marks the latest milestone for a firm whose painful downward spiral has become symbolic of China’s long-standing property sector woes.
Once the country’s biggest real estate firm, Evergrande was worth more than US$50 billion at its peak and helped propel China’s rapid economic growth in recent decades.
But it defaulted in 2021 after years of struggling to repay creditors.
A Hong Kong court issued a winding-up order for Evergrande in January 2024, ruling that the company had failed to come up with a suitable debt repayment plan.
Liquidators have made moves to recover creditors’ investments, including filing a lawsuit against PwC and its mainland Chinese arm for their role in auditing the debt-ridden developer.
The firm’s debt load is bigger than the previously estimated amount of US$27.5 billion, according to a filing earlier this month attributed to liquidators Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong.
The statement added that China Evergrande Group was a holding company and that liquidators had assumed control of more than 100 companies within the group.
Evergrande’s saga – and similar issues faced by other property giants including Country Garden and Vanke – have been closely followed by observers assessing the health of the world’s second-largest economy.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/china-evergrande-group-delisted-hong-kong-stock-exchange-5312341
