(Reuters) – China Evergrande said on Monday that a court in Hong Kong had ordered one of its key offshore units to be wound up, the latest in a slew of legal victories for the embattled developer’s liquidators.
The liquidators had filed a winding-up petition against company subsidiary CEG Holdings BVI in September, in a bid to recover funds from the debt-laden property company that defaulted in 2021 and triggered China’s real estate market crisis.
Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property developer with more than $300 billion of liabilities, was ordered by the Hong Kong High Court in January 2024 to liquidate after it failed to offer a concrete restructuring plan for its $23 billion offshore debt.
The firm’s liquidators — Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong of Alvarez & Marsal Asia — have been striving to recover at least a slice of what creditors are currently owed, and recoup $6 billion in remuneration and dividends given to individuals, including its founder.
They have also initiated legal action against Evergrande’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and began court proceedings against commercial real estate services company CBRE Group, according to a Financial Times report.
Trading in shares of China Evergrande, suspended since Jan. 29, 2024, will remain suspended, the company said.
(Reporting by Rishav Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)