Fantasia Holdings said it had "no liquidity issue" — then defaulted two weeks later

Fantasia Holdings, a mid-sized Shenzhen developer founded in 1996 by Zeng Jie, owed $205.7 million of principal on a dollar bond maturing October 4, 2021, part of a $500 million note issued in 2016. In late September, as an Evergrande-driven confidence crisis spread through Chinese property debt, Fantasia told investors its "operating performance is good with sufficient working capital and no liquidity issue," and said it had already prepared the funds to redeem the bond. A vehicle owned by the founder bought a small piece of the same bond issue around then, read as a signal of confidence.

On October 4, the bond matured and Fantasia did not pay. Two days later it confirmed the miss, adding that "given the liquidity issue faced by the group, there is no guarantee" it could meet other obligations. Fitch, downgrading Fantasia from B to CCC- the same day, said the company had claimed $200 million of offshore cash as of August but had since used $102 million of it for an undisclosed private bond repayment it had not flagged to the market.

The reversal, days after the reassurance, read differently from Evergrande's slower crisis: Fantasia had been seen as having the cash to pay, so the miss looked less like insolvency creeping up and more like a company that told bondholders something it could not back. Shares fell nearly 40% to a record low on resumption of trading, and all three major agencies cut Fantasia to default-range ratings within days. By early 2022 the company faced roughly $1.9 billion of offshore bonds and 6.4 billion yuan of onshore debt due or puttable, and creditors filed Cayman Islands winding-up petitions.

Fantasia spent the following years restructuring roughly $4 billion of offshore debt, including a 2023 plan converting $1.3 billion into equity and reissuing the rest as longer-dated bonds; it drew only partial support and was revised in 2024. In February 2026, creditors holding 99.67% of $6.08 billion in voting claims approved a further-revised scheme, with court sanction hearings set for March 2026 — over four years after the default, and after annual sales had fallen below 3 billion yuan for three straight years.