Hong Kong (AFP) – Embattled property giant China Evergrande Group said Tuesday it will delist from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as a heavier-than-expected debt burden weighed on its liquidation process. The Hong Kong bourse’s listing committee decided to cancel Evergrande’s listing as it had failed to meet a July deadline to resume trading, according to an exchange filing.
Once China’s biggest real estate firm, Evergrande was worth more than $50 billion at its peak and helped propel the country’s rapid economic growth in recent decades. However, it defaulted in 2021 and became emblematic of the years-long crisis in the country’s property market. 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 debt repayment plan that suited its creditors. Evergrande’s shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange were suspended that month.
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. Evergrande’s share listing will be canceled on August 25, according to Tuesday’s filing, which was attributed to liquidators Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong.
Middleton and Wong said in an attached progress report that Evergrande’s debt load was bigger than the previously estimated $27.5 billion. “As at 31 July 2025, this claims’ discovery exercise had resulted in 187 proofs of debt being submitted, by which claims of approximately HK$350 billion (US$45 billion) in aggregate have been made,” the document read. This figure was not to be taken as final, Middleton and Wong added. “The liquidators believe that a holistic restructuring will prove out of reach” at this stage, the duo wrote.
China Evergrande Group was a holding company, and the liquidators said they had assumed control of more than 100 companies within the group. They stated in the report that they were not able to “estimate the amounts that may ultimately be realised from these entities.” The property behemoth’s market value was only around $274 million when share trading was suspended, and its founder Xu Jiayin owned a roughly 60 percent stake at the time, Bloomberg News reported.
“Whether or not there’s a delisting, Evergrande’s shareholders will likely have to prepare for near-total loss,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kristy Hung told the news outlet before the delisting was announced. “The developer’s liquidation and substantial claims from creditors who are ahead in the order suggests equity holders face material risk of getting nothing,” Hung said.
© 2024 AFP
