China Evergrande suspends stock trading in Hong Kong

The shares of the indebted real estate developer China Evergrande Group were suspended on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday morning as the company ran to deliver apartments to millions of home buyers and raise money to handle the $ 300 billion debt.

Evergrande said in an archive that the shares were stopped pending an announcement “containing inside information”, without giving further details. The company had stopped its shares once before, in October, when it tried to complete the sale of a $ 2.6 billion stake in the property management unit.

That deal eventually fell through.

The giant real estate developer went into default last month after failing to make a final debt payment to foreign investors. The company owes an estimated 1.6 million apartments to home buyers and is facing dozens of lawsuits.

Although Evergrande has not yet resolved the cash squeeze, it promised last week to complete the construction of 39,000 apartments before the end of 2021. The announcement sent Evergrande shares soaring, but they fell the next day after the company failed to meet another payment deadline on its foreign . debt.

On Friday, Evergrande looked to revise its plan to repay investors in the asset management unit, promising to make monthly payments of around $ 1260 to each investor for three months. It had not previously given a specific repayment amount. In his statement to wealth management investors on Friday, Evergrande said they plan to “actively raise funds”, adding that the situation was not “ideal”.

At one point, as many as 80 percent of Evergrande employees were asked to put money into asset management products to help fund operations. In September, Evergrande employees, contractors and home buyers protested outside the company’s offices and public buildings.

Government officials joined a risk committee set up in December to help manage Evergrande and restructure the company.