HONG KONG (Reuters) – China Evergrande Group’s long-awaited offshore debt restructuring proposals failed to address investor concerns about the property sector’s prospects, sending shares of rival developers lower on Thursday.
Evergrande, which has been at the centre of China’s property sector crisis, on Wednesday announced restructuring proposals for its $22.7 billion worth of offshore debt, seen as a test of investor sentiment toward the embattled sector.
An index tracking mainland-based property developers slipped 1.1% by early morning Hong Kong time, while the broader stock benchmark was flat.
While trading in Hong Kong-listed shares of Evergrande remained suspended pending release of financial reports, peer Country Garden Holdings slipped 0.9% and Sino Ocean Group lost 5.9% in the early trade.
Under the debt restructuring plan, Evergrande bondholders were given two main options. Creditors can either swap all of their holdings into new notes with maturities of 10 to 12 years, or convert them into different combinations of new notes with tenors of five to nine years and equity-linked instruments.
“For creditors, what is the alternative or right of recourse? Sounds blunt, but it is what it is,” said David Blennerhassett, Quiddity Advisors analyst who publishes on Smartkarma told Reuters.
“I think its too early to speculate that this could show that the worst is over for Evergrande,” he added.
Evergrande said on Wednesday that additional financing of 250 billion yuan ($36.55 billion) to 300 billion yuan would be required for its business as it resumes operations over the next three years.
($1 = 6.8407 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Xie Yu, Scott Murdoch, Samuel Shen, Clare Jim; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Jamie Freed)
