Chinese property developer Kaisa Group Holdings said it has made significant progress in restructuring its offshore liabilities, enabling the beleaguered company to offer billions of dollars in new debt and convertible bonds, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company has entered into a restructuring support agreement with its debtholders, under which Kaisa will issue $5.0 billion of notes in six tranches and $4.8 billion of mandatory convertible bonds in eight tranches, the developer said Tuesday.
Read more
A mainland Chinese court accepted a liquidation application filed against a China Evergrande Group unit earlier this month, triggering a formal legal process that ratchets up the pressure on the defaulted developer to either restructure or face liquidation in its main base of operations under a worst-case scenario, Bloomberg News reported. The Intermediate People’s Court of Guangzhou City, where Evergrande is based, accepted the application filed against Guangzhou Kailong Real Estate as of Aug. 9, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange filing late Monday.
Read more
China is considering a new funding option for local governments to buy unsold homes after a series of rescue packages failed to prop up the market, Bloomberg News reported. The latest proposal would allow local governments to fund their home purchases by issuing so-called special bonds, the proceeds of which are currently restricted to uses including infrastructure and environmental projects.
Read more
The European Commission on Tuesday proposed final duties of up to 36.3% on imported electric vehicles made in China, as part of the highest profile EU probe of alleged Chinese subsidies which has provoked threats of retaliation from Beijing, Reuters reported. It has also launched investigations into whether Chinese clean tech producers are dumping subsidised goods on EU markets and whether Chinese-owned companies unfairly benefit from subsidies while operating inside the European Union. The EU executive says its aim is to prevent unfair competition and market distortion.
Read more
A bankruptcy filing against a Guangzhou-based unit of collapsed developer China Evergrande has been accepted by a mainland China court, according to a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange, the South China Morning Post reported. A court in the southeastern Chinese city accepted a bankruptcy liquidation application filed against Guangzhou Kailong Real Estate, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of the world’s most indebted developer, on August 9, the liquidators of Evergrande said in the filing on Monday.
Read more
China’s central bank said a meeting in Shanghai produced an agreement with the U.S. Treasury to appoint contact people to deal with any future “financial stress events,” Bloomberg News reported. The two sides also “exchanged lists of financial stability contacts” during the fifth meeting of the so-called Financial Working Group that was set up following Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to China last year.
Read more
China's factory output slowed for a third straight month in July, showing that the recovery in the world's second-largest economy was losing steam, although the battered consumer sector perked up slightly as stimulus targeting households took effect, Reuters reported. A mixed batch of data on Thursday pointed to a patchy start to the second half for the $19 trillion economy and gave policymakers continued cause for concern following dismal export, prices and bank lending indicators earlier this month.
A recent string of dismal indicators have dulled expectations for China's economic performance in July, in an ominous sign for the rest of 2024 and pointing to the need for more stimulus measures beyond plastering over pain points in the world's second-largest economy, Reuters reported. Calls for more growth boosting measures for the $19 trillion economy have dogged officials after a widely expected post-pandemic recovery failed to materialize in 2023. Still, the government is targeting economic growth of around 5% this year. The latest data point to a rocky start to the second half.
The world’s biggest steel producer sounded the alarm about an industry crisis in China that carries the potential to ripple around the globe and plunge the sector into a deeper downturn, Bloomberg reported. Conditions in China’s steel sector are like a “harsh winter” that will be “longer, colder and more difficult to endure than we expected,” China Baowu Steel Group Corp. chairman Hu Wangming told staff at the company’s half-year meeting, warning of a worse challenge than major traumas in 2008 and 2015.
A group of senior Biden administration officials is traveling to Shanghai this week for a round of high-level meetings intended to keep the economic relationship between the U.S. and China on stable footing amid mounting trade tensions between the two countries, the New York Times reported. The talks will take place on Thursday and Friday and are being convened through the U.S.-China Financial Working Group, which was created last year.