Evergrande

Aug. 25 (UPI) — Chinese property giant China Evergrande was delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange on Monday, 20 months after being placed into liquidation by a court in the semi-autonomous region of China and almost 15 years after it was the most oversubscribed IPO of 2009 with a $50 billion valuation.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing said it canceled the listing effective Monday because an 18-month deadline for Evergrande to resume trading passed last month, with the company opting not to appeal the decision.

“The exchange advises shareholders of the company who have any queries about the implications of the delisting to obtain appropriate professional advice,” said HKEX.

Macrolens managing principal Brian McCarthy told CNBC he expected investors holding Evergrande shares and bonds to lose most of their money and that a surge in Chinese property stocks might just be the initial phase of a “speculative frenzy” in Chinese equities.

“There have been some attempts to attach [Evergrande’s] assets, but they’ve not really managed to liquidate anything for more than a few cents on the dollar,” said McCarthy.

He warned that the debacle put foreign investors who invest in China via Hong Kong on notice that they have “limited recourse to onshore assets if things went bad,” and predicted that shareholders and bondholders in most of the large Chinese property developers would end up with “goose eggs.”

Trading in Evergrande shares ceased in January 2024 after a judge issued a winding-up order after the developer repeatedly failed to come up with a viable plan to restructure liabilities of at least $325 billion.

Shares sold at 45 cents back in 2009 were worth 2 cents at the last quote early Monday.

Trading in the stock had been suspended several times since 2021, but it has always managed to resume within the maximum permitted gap of 18 months to avoid delisting.

“Once delisted, there is no coming back,” Dan Wang, China director at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, told the BBC.

The firm sought bankruptcy protection in the United States in August 2023 and regulators suspended the stock the following month amid reports that founder and chairman Hui Ka Yan was under house arrest on the mainland.

Hui presided over a 15-year drive to build Evergrande into one of China’s largest businesses, but the growth was delivered through massive borrowing, much of it highly leveraged.

Much of Evergrande’s debt is owed to prospective homebuyers with down payments on apartments and houses that are half-built, or on which work has yet to start, as well as suppliers and subcontractors.

Hui was fined $6.5 million and received a life ban from participating in China’s capital market for claiming Evergrande’s revenue was $78 billion more than it actually was.

In summer 2023, after failing to issue financial results for two years, the group belatedly reported that it had lost $81.1 billion during the period as it battled to maintain payments to suppliers and lenders and complete projects across China.

The losses, $66.4 billion in 2021 and $14.7 billion in 2022, were blamed on a market slump that forced it to take haircuts on its developments and financial assets and higher borrowing costs.

The demise of the firm, which at its peak had more than 1,300 projects in 280 Chinese cities, is the most high-profile symbol of the crisis enveloping China’s property sector, which accounts for as much as 25% of GDP.

Published on
12/08/2025 – 19:03 GMT+2

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Evergrande, once China’s second-largest property developer and now the world’s most indebted company, said on Tuesday it will be delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange on 25 August.

The company, founded in 1996, grew on a wave of debt-fuelled expansion by aggressively borrowing to buy land and build projects. It later diversified into wealth management, electric vehicles, theme parks, bottled water and even a soccer club.

Delisting in Hong Kong

Evergrande was the world’s most heavily indebted real estate developer, with over $300 billion (€257.1bn) owed to banks and bondholders, when the court handed down a liquidation order in January 2024.

The court had ruled that the company had failed to provide a viable restructuring plan for its debts, which fuelled fears about China’s rising debt burden, and trading of its shares has been halted since the ruling.

The Hong Kong stock exchange stipulates that the listing of companies may be cancelled if trading in their securities has remained suspended for 18 months consecutively.

China Evergrande Group received a letter on 8 August from the city’s stock exchange notifying the firm of its decision to cancel the listing as trading had not resumed by 28 July. The last day of the listing will be 22 August and Evergrande will not apply for a review of the decision, the company said in a statement.

“All shareholders, investors and potential investors of the company should note that after the last listing date, whilst the share certificates of the shares will remain valid, the shares will not be listed on, and will not be tradeable on the Stock Exchange,” the statement said.

A trouble-ridden sector

Evergrande is among scores of developers that defaulted on debts after Chinese regulators cracked down on excessive borrowing in the property industry in 2020. Unable to obtain financing, their vast obligations to creditors and customers became unsustainable.

The crackdown also tipped the property industry into crisis, dragging down the world’s second-largest economy and rattling financial systems in and outside China.

Once among the nation’s strongest growth engines, the industry is struggling to exit a prolonged downturn. House prices in China have continued to fall even after the introduction of supportive measures by policymakers.

The Hong Kong court system has been dealing with liquidation petitions against several Chinese property developers, including one of the largest Chinese real estate companies, Country Garden, which is expected to have another hearing in January.

China South City Holdings, a smaller property developer, was also ordered to liquidate on Monday.

Evergrande, founded in the mid-1990s by Hui Ka Yan, also known as Xu Jiayin, had over 90% of its assets on the Chinese mainland, according to the 2024 ruling. The firm was listed in Hong Kong in 2009 as “Evergrande Real Estate Group” and suspended its share trading on 29 January 2024, at 0.16 Hong Kong dollars (€0.017).

The liquidators said they have assumed control of over 100 companies within the group and entities under their direct management control with collective assets valued at $3.5 billion (€2.99bn) as of 29 January 2024. They said an estimate of the amounts that may ultimately be realised from these entities wasn’t available yet.

About $255 million (€218.5m) worth of assets have been sold, the liquidators said, calling the realisation “modest.”

“The liquidators believe that a holistic restructuring will prove out of reach, but they will, of course, explore any credible possibilities in this regard that may present themselves,” they said.

Hui, Evergrande’s founder, was detained in China in September 2023 on suspicion of committing crimes, adding to the company’s woes.