Sunac China bought Wanda's theme parks with borrowed money — then had to restructure twice

Sunac grew through the 2010s by buying what other developers were selling, on borrowed money. The largest single deal came in 2017, when Dalian Wanda Group needed to cut its own debt: Sunac paid 43.8 billion yuan for a 91% stake in 13 of Wanda's cultural-tourism and theme-park projects, and took on 45.4 billion yuan of debt tied to those assets in the process. It was one of many leveraged acquisitions Sunac funded with offshore US-dollar bonds, layering foreign debt onto a business whose revenue came in yuan.

When Beijing's 2020–2021 credit tightening on developers cut off the refinancing that roll-up strategy depended on, Sunac defaulted on its debt in May 2022. It spent the next eighteen months negotiating with creditors before completing, in November 2023, a restructuring of roughly 90 billion yuan (about $12.65 billion) of combined onshore and offshore debt — swapping bonds for new dollar notes, mandatory convertible bonds, ordinary convertible bonds and shares in Sunac Services, cutting total debt by about $4.5 billion and diluting existing shareholders as creditors converted into equity.

The November 2023 deal did not end it. By late 2024 Sunac was back at the table with mainland creditors over a separate 15.4 billion yuan slice of onshore debt, offering cash repurchase, equity payment, asset-based settlement or long-term extensions — a plan aimed at halving that remaining onshore liability. A further offshore restructuring, covering about $9.6 billion, followed in 2025.