Evergrande: From China's Top Property Developer to Stock Delisting

Evergrande, once China's largest real estate developer and a key player in the country's economic growth, has been delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange. The delisting marks the end of an 18-month trading suspension after the company was put into liquidation. Once valued at over $50 billion, Evergrande's market value has plummeted by over 99% since its peak in 2017 amid a nationwide slowdown in China's real estate sector.

Evergrande defaulted on its $300 billion debt in 2021 after being unable to repay it. A Hong Kong court issued a winding-up order for the company in January 2024, citing its failure to present an acceptable debt repayment plan. The liquidators have since tried to recover creditors' investments, including suing PwC and its mainland Chinese arm over their role in auditing the financially troubled developer.

Evergrande's collapse has had a major impact on China's property market, with national property sales and price growth slowing down. The downturn has only worsened, with prices across China falling by nearly a fifth in March, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements. At the time of its collapse in 2024, Evergrande and its subsidiaries were working on some 1,300 projects in over 280 cities.

Along with its real estate projects, Evergrande also invested in electric vehicle production and serviced 3,000 projects through its property management business. In March 2024, the company was fined $580 million after Beijing's securities regulator found it had inflated its revenues by nearly $80 billion in 2019 and 2020. The Chinese government has been struggling to revive the declining property market amid the ongoing crisis.