Chinese giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy in the United States

MADRID, 18 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Real estate developer China Evergrande Group has filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 15 of the United States Bankruptcy Law in a New York court, according to court documents seen by the Bloomberg news agency.

Precisely, this Chapter 15 protects the assets of the company in the United States, while restructuring agreements are managed in other jurisdictions.

International debt restructuring agreements sometimes require the filing of a Chapter 15 case in the course of completing a transaction.

Thus, Evergrande's petition refers to the restructuring procedures that are being carried out in Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands.

The Chinese construction company has been working for some time to finalize a debt restructuring plan outside its country. In July it received court approval to vote on the deal and meetings are scheduled to take place later this month.

AN 'OFFSHORE' DEBT OF OVER 17,700 MILLION EUROS

Evergrande announced last March a plan to carry out the restructuring of part of its 'offshore' debt, which then amounted to approximately 140,284 million yuan (17,702 million euros).

The Chinese real estate giant, beset by difficulties in meeting a liability estimated at around 300,000 million dollars (275,665 million euros), failed to meet the self-imposed deadline to make its restructuring plan known by the end of 2022.

Evergrande published its overdue accounts for the years 2021 and 2022 last July, in which the company recorded losses for an aggregate amount of 581,211 million yuan (73,369 million euros at current exchange rates).

Specifically, the Chinese real estate giant suffered losses of 476,095 million yuan (60,161 million euros) in the 2021 financial year, some 'red numbers' that it managed to reduce in 2022 to 105,116 million yuan (13,283 million euros).

In the 2020 financial year, the Chinese developer had posted an attributable net profit of 8,076 million yuan (1,020 million euros).

The release of the company's accounts for the back years of 2021 and 2022 was part of Evergrande's efforts to relist after trading in its shares was suspended in March 2022.

The problems for Evergrande began two years ago, when the Chinese group recognized liquidity difficulties and risks of default.

The Chinese real estate sector is not going through its best moment. Country Garden, which was the largest real estate developer in China and controlled by the richest woman in the Asian giant, Yang Huiyan, warned a few days ago that it expects to record losses of between 45,000 and 55,000 million yuan (5,675 and 6,937 million euros). in the first half of 2023, causing its listing to plummet on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Country Garden attributed its loss forecast to the decline in the gross profit margin of the real estate business and the increase in the impairment of real estate projects as a result of the decline in sales in the real estate industry, as well as the loss related to exchange rate fluctuations.