Kaisa Group borrowed against its land bank twice — and defaulted twice

Kaisa Group built itself into one of Shenzhen's largest property developers by borrowing heavily to buy land, funding the purchases with offshore dollar bonds and, in its early years, wealth management products sold directly to retail investors. The land bank was the collateral for the next round of debt, and the next round of debt bought the next parcel of land — a cycle that only worked as long as apartment sales and refinancing kept pace with it.

In late 2014 a government freeze on some of Kaisa's Shenzhen projects cut off its cash, and in April 2015 Kaisa missed interest payments on roughly $1 billion of dollar bonds, becoming the first Chinese property company to default on offshore debt. It restructured that debt and kept building.

The same funding model failed again in December 2021: Kaisa let an offer to extend a $400 million bond lapse, and Fitch declared the company in default on December 9, 2021, within days of Evergrande's own default. By then Kaisa carried roughly $12 billion in offshore bonds — second only to Evergrande among Chinese developers — atop total liabilities that reached 226.4 billion yuan (about $31 billion) as its restructuring dragged on.

A restructuring plan finally won creditor support in August 2024, offering bondholders new notes and mandatory convertible bonds in place of the defaulted debt. It took until September 15, 2025 — nearly four years after the second default — for the exchange to close, swapping roughly $10.4 billion of claims into new securities listed in Singapore.