Evergrande owed $300B with no plan — 'enough is enough', the court said

China Evergrande Group grew into one of China's largest property developers and, by the time it fell, the world's most heavily indebted one. When Beijing clamped down on developer borrowing from 2020, the model broke: Evergrande first defaulted on its debts in December 2021, with more than $300 billion of liabilities owed to banks and bondholders.

The end came through a creditor petition: Top Shine Global, a Hong Kong firm, filed in June 2022 after Evergrande failed to honour a share buyback agreement. Hearings were adjourned repeatedly while Evergrande promised to refine a restructuring plan, but on 29 January 2024 Judge Linda Chan ordered the company liquidated, citing insolvency and a lack of progress on any viable proposal. 'Enough is enough,' she said — the company had offered 'not even a restructuring proposal, much less a fully formulated proposal'. Shares fell more than 20% before trading was suspended.

Liquidators from Alvarez & Marsal were appointed, among them Tiffany Wong. The order covered only the Hong Kong-listed holding company: Evergrande's vast operations sit in the mainland, and only a few billion dollars of the debt is owed to foreign creditors. That made the liquidation a test case for whether mainland courts would recognise a Hong Kong winding-up — two years of adjournments had produced no plan, and the court decided creditors were better served by ending the wait.