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Bond trustee becomes new petitioner to liquidate China developer Kaisa

Reuters
·2-min read
FILE PHOTO: A sign of the Kaisa Holdings Group is seen at the Shanghai Kaisa Financial Centre, in Shanghai

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong court adjourned a hearing to liquidate Chinese property developer Kaisa Group to April 29 after a bond trustee, instructed by a major group of dollar bondholders, replaced the original petitioner.

The latest development came after Broad Peak Investment, which filed the winding-up petition in July in relation to non-payment of onshore bonds worth 170 million yuan ($24 million), sought to withdraw from the case as it has sold the debt holdings earlier this year.

Shenzhen-based Kaisa has been working on a debt restructuring for two years after defaulting its $12 billion of offshore debt in late 2021.

Kaisa is China's second-largest issuer of offshore debt among developers after China Evergrande Group and was the first Chinese property developer to default on its dollar bonds in 2015.

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Many Chinese developers, including giant Country Garden, are facing winding-up petitions filed after the sector plunged into a debt crisis in 2021, resulting in numerous firms defaulting on their debt obligations. Evergrande was ordered to liquidate by the Hong Kong High Court in January.

Kaisa said in a filing on Friday that Citicorp International, the substituting petitioner, would file a re-amended petition against the company in relation to the non-payment of the 2023 notes with an outstanding principal of $750 million.

A lawyer for the ad hoc bondholder group said after the hearing on Friday that Citicorp is the bond trustee and it acts on the instruction of the group.

A lawyer for Broad Peak in the last hearing in October cited a statement that Kaisa filed with the court, saying creditors would get less than 5% of their money back if it was forced into liquidation. Kaisa also said its cash to short term debt ratio was 0.02 and that it was cashflow insolvent.

Kaisa had 232.5 billion yuan of total liabilities and 278.7 billion yuan of total assets as of the end of June 2023, according to its interim results.

($1 = 7.1925 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Lincoln Feast)