China

China’s stressed developers face nearly $1.3 billion of bond payments in December, after a month in which investor sentiment toward the property sector showed signs of stabilizing despite fresh signs of liquidity pressure, Bloomberg News reported. The total was $2 billion in November, and there have been no defaults reported according to Bloomberg-compiled data as of Friday, after multiple instances in October. Still, investor scrutiny persists regarding principal and interest payments as a cash crunch engulfs the real estate industry.

Ant Group Co. has started making it clear to customers if they are borrowing from outside lenders or from the company itself, as Jack Ma’s financial-technology giant continues to fall in line with Chinese regulations, the Wall Street Journal reported. Before its wings were clipped by Beijing, Ant, via its payment and lifestyle app Alipay, offered consumer-credit services that were widely popular among Chinese consumers and small businesses.

A resurgence of COVID-19 infections in northern China have forced two small cities to suspend public transport and tighten control over residents' movement, as the country has showed no willingness to go easy on local outbreaks, Reuters reported. China reported 21 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases with confirmed symptoms on Sunday, official data showed on Monday, marking the highest daily count since mid-November. Almost all of the new local cases were detected in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia.

China’s marked economic slowdown in the second half of the year is testing the central bank’s policy mettle and dividing economists over whether more aggressive action is needed to avoid a deeper downturn, Bloomberg News reported. The People’s Bank of China is having to juggle multiple economic risks, pulling policy in different directions. Growth is heading for lows not seen since 1990 -- if last year’s pandemic year is excluded -- factory-gate inflation is soaring, while the currency is rallying on the back of record trade surpluses. On top of that, the U.S.

Some Chinese banks have been told by financial regulators to issue more loans to property firms for project development, two banking sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters on Monday, in efforts to marginally ease liquidity strains across the industry. Chinese authorities have yet to publicly give any signal that they will relax the "three red lines" - financial requirements introduced by the central bank last year that developers must meet to get new bank loans.

China’s central bank signaled possible easing measures to aid the economy’s recovery after a sharp downturn in recent months fueled by a property slump, Bloomberg News reported. In its latest quarterly monetary policy report published Friday, the People’s Bank of China removed from its policy outlook a few key phrases cited in previous reports, including sticking with “normal monetary policy.” That suggests a shift in stance toward more supportive measures, several major banks like Citigroup Inc., Nomura Holdings Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said.

China should be able to contain the economic impact of financial strains experienced by real-estate developers but needs to step-up fiscal support for its slowing economy, the International Monetary Fund said, Bloomberg News reported. Downside risks to the IMF’s forecast of 8% growth in China this year and 5.6% in 2022 “are accumulating” due to factors such as “pandemic uncertainty” and weak consumption, the IMF said in a press release following an annual survey of the world’s second-largest economy.

China Evergrande Group plans to sell the rest of its stake in HengTen Networks Group Ltd. for HK$2.13 billion ($273 million), the first Hong Kong-listed business to be dropped by the debt-stricken property giant, Bloomberg News reported. The developer agreed to sell its 18% holding in the internet services firm to Hong Kong-based Allied Resources Investment Holdings Ltd. at HK$1.28 apiece, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange filing. That’s a discount of about 24% to the last close on Wednesday.

China Huarong Asset Management Co. plans to raise as much as 42 billion yuan ($6.6 billion) by selling shares to a group of state-backed investors and said it will divest more assets as it unveiled long-waited details on a rescue package to keep the troubled bad-debt manager afloat, Bloomberg News reported. The Beijing-based firm will sell no more than 41.2 billion shares to investors led by Citic Group at 1.02 yuan apiece, a 23% premium to the last closing price before the suspension of trading, according to a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing late Wednesday.

China plans to let property companies resume issuance of asset-backed securities, ending a three-month market freeze as authorities move to insulate higher-rated developers from an industrywide funding crunch, Bloomberg News reported. Financial regulators recently told Chinese exchanges that “high quality” developers can apply to issue new ABS to repay outstanding debt, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. A unit of state-owned developer China Resources Land plans to issue 520 million yuan ($81.5 million) of ABS this week.