Latest news with #Evergrande
Straits Times
13 hours ago
- Business
- Straits Times
Evergrande tycoon's ex-wife spent millions on luxury homes after property giant defaulted on loans
Evergrande, once China's largest property developer, was forced into liquidation in 2024 with US$300 billion in debt. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG HONG KONG – The ex-wife of China Evergrande Group's chairman spent millions on luxury apartments in London, nine months after the country's once largest property developer defaulted on its loans. While a court document in January unveiled her ownership of 33 units at the high-end residential development Thames City, it didn't include the timing of the purchase. The properties worth £49.8 million (S$86.3 million) were acquired in September 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News based on UK land registry filings. That's almost a year after Chinese authorities asked Evergrande chairman Hui Ka Yan to pay debt with his personal wealth. Ding Yumei holds the homes through five British Virgin Islands companies. She has hired Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) as a letting and management agent, according to a UK court filing in January. The 68-year-old is living in one of the most expensive homes she purchased, worth £5.4 million, with two of her children and two grandchildren, according to court filings. She was no longer listed as a spouse of Mr Hui in Evergrande's filing in August 2023, while it's unclear when the two divorced. The properties add to a list of more than US$350 million global assets that Ms Ding amassed, including a record-breaking mansion at the heart of London in 2020 and other ones in Vancouver. It underscores the challenges liquidators face in gaining full view of the assets held by Mr Hui and his confidantes, and the obstacles to asserting control across multiple jurisdictions. Once Asia's second richest, Mr Hui and Evergrande exemplify China's real estate boom and bust. His sprawling empire was forced into liquidation in 2024 with US$300 billion in debt, as China's property meltdown continued into a fourth year. In 2024, JLL sought permission from the Business and Property Courts of England and Wales to continue managing Ms Ding's properties, following an injunction issued against her – a request that was granted by a UK judge. The move came after courts in both Hong Kong and London imposed worldwide asset-freeze injunctions on Ms Ding in July, part of a broader effort to recover US$6 billion from her, Mr Hui, and former Evergrande executives. Ms Ding has been told to provide detailed asset disclosure to liquidators in Hong Kong, yet she has delayed the process by applying for confidentiality summons and asking for other technical clarifications. Ms Ding's representatives have argued that she didn't hold a management role in the company and wasn't involved in operations. Ms Ding's representatives didn't respond to requests for comment. Mr Hui couldn't be located, as he was taken away by Chinese police in 2023 and put under control. The monthly rental for the Thames City apartments go from about £3,800 for a one-bedroom flat to more than £34,000 for a five-bedroom penthouse, according to listings from property platform Zoopla. The Thames City project was co-developed by Guangzhou R&F Properties and C C Land Holdings, run by Cheung Chung Kiu, a poker-playing friend of Mr Hui. In April 2022, R&F sold a 50 per cent stake in the project to a private vehicle wholly owned by Mr Cheung at a loss of HK$1.84 billion (S$302 million). Later in 2022, R&F's co-founder Zhang Li chose to stay confined in one of the project's penthouses when he was on bail after facing bribery charges from the US. BLOOMBERG Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Bloomberg
14 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Evergrande Tycoon's Ex-Wife Spent Millions on Homes as Firm Sank
The ex-wife of China Evergrande Group 's chairman spent millions on luxury apartments in London, nine months after the developer defaulted on its loans. While a court document in January unveiled her ownership of 33 units at the high-end residential development Thames City, it didn't include the timing of the purchase. The properties worth £49.8 million ($67 million) were acquired in September 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News based on UK land registry filings. That's almost a year after Chinese authorities asked Evergrande Chairman Hui Ka Yan to pay debt with his personal wealth.
Gulf Insider
a day ago
- Automotive
- Gulf Insider
China Auto Industry On Verge Of Collapse As Six Major Cities Run Out Of Car-Buying Subsidies
China auto industry was already on the rocks. Recall, in late May we reported that a historic price war had broken out in China, one where the world's largest maker of EVs, BYD, had just cut prices by 34% in a desperate attempt to capture market share and put its competitors out of business (while unleashing a deflationary global shockwave that would crush EV makers around the globe). Overnight the world's largest maker of EVs, China's BYD (it surpassed Tesla last year) unleashed a price war nuke, cutting prices by up to 34%. Other Chinese automakers immediately followed. This will send a deflationary shockwave and spark major trade war escalation by Europe — zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 27, 2025 Just a few days later, Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motor – one of China's largest car makers – said China's auto industry was going through its own 'Evergrande' moment as a result of the unprecedented price war (for those who missed that particular episode, Evergrande is effectively China's Lehman, because while the largest financial asset in the US is capital markets in China it is real estate, and the 2021 collapse of Evergrande has left China's property market shocked and still unable to recover). And also roughly at the same time, we reported that China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (or CATL), the world's largest EV battery maker (and thus directly dependent on the viability and growth of the global EV industry), was receiving more in Chinese subsidies in 6 months than Chinese auto giants BYD, Great Wall and SAIC combined. All in order to maintain the illusion that China's EV industry was firing on all cylinders, to use a bad metaphor, and more importantly, to give the impression that China's economy was booming at a time when all eyes were on it as a result of the trade war with America (because woe to the loser). The problem, as every Potemkin village comes to realize sooner or later, is that one can only pretend for so long and eventually the stimulus money runs out. And in the case of China, the stimmies have almost run out. According to Reuters, at least six cities and municipalities across China have suspended trade-in subsidies for car buyers in June, which could grind to a halt most if not all new car sales in the world's second-biggest economy. Notices from governments in Zhengzhou and Luoyang blamed the subsidy pause on the first round of funding allocated by Beijing for the program running out, while Shenyang and Chongqing said the suspension was due to adjustments to improve capital efficiency. The northwestern region of Xinjiang issued a similar suspension. Beijing was pushing the communist economy into overdrive with the help of billions in stimmies to create the impression in April and May that all is well and that Trump's trade war isn't hurting China. But now, the money has run out. As Reuters reports, China's government has leaned on subsidies for big-ticket items, including cars, home appliances and some electronics to get people spending as consumer sentiment in the country remains sluggish amid a prolonged property slump and concerns over wage growth and unemployment. Naturally, the programmes – also known as free money – have been embraced with some enthusiasm, and as of May 31, there were more than 4 million applications submitted this year for car-specific trade-in subsidies, according to the country's Ministry of Commerce. Not surprisingly then that boosted by the torrential stimulus, Chinese retail sales data for May released earlier this week surprised on the upside… but economists quickly realized that subsidies were the main reason for the higher-than-expected 6.4% growth. Click here to read more…
Newsweek
a day ago
- Business
- Newsweek
China's Housing Market Facing Long Slump
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The devastating property crisis that broke out in China after the collapse of giants like Evergrande is far from being resolved, experts say, as new home prices in the country continue falling and new construction projects get cut down. The sector has gone "from a free fall" in the years following Evergrande's default in 2021 "to a gradual fall" today, Zhaopeng Xing, senior China strategist at ANZ, told Newsweek. What Is Happening In China's Property Market? China's property market has propelled the country's explosive economic growth over the past few decades, single-handedly lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty and into the middle class. But since the collapse of giant developers like Evergrande and Country Garden, the sector has been sinking, threatening to drag the Chinese economy down with it. Despite efforts from the government to revive the struggling property sector, which was once the country's economic powerhouse, recent data show that it is still unable to walk on its own feet and demand is failing to pick up. High-rise buildings under construction stand behind a Chinese national flag waving in the foreground, as cranes continue work on partially completed towers on May 07, 2025, in Chongqing, China. High-rise buildings under construction stand behind a Chinese national flag waving in the foreground, as cranes continue work on partially completed towers on May 07, 2025, in Chongqing, home prices fell 0.22 percent in 70 Chinese cities in May, the largest decline in seven months, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics. Existing home prices fell by an even bigger 0.5 percent, marking the steepest decline in eight months. In the same month, residential sales by value dropped 6.1 percent year-on-year, while real-estate investment plunged 12 percent from a year earlier. Kent Deng, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics (LSE), told Newsweek that there has been "no real recovery so far" in the Chinese market. "It is a story of housing oversupply," he said. "China has had 600 million permanent buildings, roughly two people a building. It will take 30-50 years to absorb them," he added. This same oversupply is leading prices to fall and new construction projects to be cut down. What Does This Mean for the Country? The latest data show that even the Chinese government policy interventions are failing to make a real dent in the situation facing homebuyers in the country, who are struggling with growing economic uncertainty linked to the trade war with the U.S. and income instability. But the central government seems determined to try to support the sector, with Premier Li Qiang pledging action during a state council meeting last week, according to state broadcaster CCTV. They might have a hard time getting the property sector out of the current slump, experts said. "Recovery will be slow as people do not have more purchasing power to buy new houses," Deng told Newsweek. The property sector plays an outsize role in China's economy, contributing to nearly a third of its GDP. Further contractions could continue hurting the country, experts said. "China's property market values 600 trillion yuan [$83.5 billion]," Xing said. "A 10-percent price fall means 60-trillion-yuan loss to households. The negative wealth effect will curb consumption and investment," he said. According to Xing, new development will not pick up in the next decade in China "as urbanization will likely come to an end by 2035," he said. In a report released on Monday, Goldman Sachs experts said that demand for new homes in China is likely to remain substantially below its 2017 peak over the next few years, especially as the country's population shrinks and continues aging. "We calculate that annual demographic demand in urban China will average only 4.1 million housing units per year in 2025-2030, compared to 9.4 million units per year in the 2010s," researchers wrote in the report shared with Newsweek. "It is striking that China's demographic demand for new urban housing likely halved within a decade." It could be a dramatic change for a country that has built its economic backbone on the property sector. While China has been trying to shift its economy away from the housing market, the result has not been good, Deng said, "because investment opportunities are very limited outside the housing market." "China will have to switch the property sector from a construction-based model to a service-like model. The transformation will change a lot of policies including land finance," Xing said. "The sector will be like real estate in other developed economies; 75-percent value added will be housing rents, not new home sales," he said. "The economy will shift away from property construction, but not real-estate services. The latter will play a bigger role in the economy."
Mint
10-06-2025
- Automotive
- Mint
Chinese State Media Takes Aim at ‘Zero-Mileage' Used Cars
(Bloomberg) -- The Communist Party controlled People's Daily newspaper has urged Chinese carmakers to stamp out 'zero-mileage' used vehicles in the latest rebuke to the auto industry amid growing concern unbridled competition could upend the market. In a commentary published Tuesday, the paper said the practice of shifting almost new cars into the second-hand market was used by manufacturers and dealers to meet sales goals, but weakened their balance sheets and could lead to consumers losing proper rights when purchasing the vehicles. 'Zero-mileage' cars are essentially an extension of the industry's price war and reflect the fierce competition gripping the market. The newspaper also called for automakers to stop their singular focus on sales and put that drive into improving technology and services. It suggested consumers shouldn't just look at the price when shopping for cars, but also product quality and after-sale care provided. The article follows a series of recent interventions from Chinese authorities on competition in the auto industry. Regulators have held at least two meetings in the past two weeks with manufacturers to address a range of topics, including 'zero-mileage' used cars. Auto executives last week were told to 'self-regulate' and not sell cars below cost or offer unreasonable price cuts. The scrutiny stepped up after market leader BYD Co. last month slashed prices by as much as 34%. 'Zero-mileage' used cars is a practice in which automakers that have failed to meet sales targets offload new vehicles to supply chain financing companies or second-hand car dealers. The essentially new vehicles then appear on the resale market with no mileage, while manufacturers record them as sales despite the cars not yet having reached an end-consumer. The increased pressure has seen automakers trade barbs at each other. Great Wall Motor Co. founder Wei Jianjun first raised the issue of 'zero-mileage' cars in an interview late last month. He also said the industry had its own 'Evergrande' — referring to the giant real estate developer that collapsed under a mountain of debt — though didn't name any specific automakers. At an industry forum held in the southwestern city of Chongqing on the weekend, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. spokesman Victor Yang brought up allegations that some of BYD's plug-in hybrids may have used cheaper fuel tanks that breached emissions standards. These accusations were first raised by Great Wall two years ago, and rejected by BYD at the time. BYD's general manager for brand and public relations, Li Yunfei, hit back at the accusations on social media. He stressed that BYD's vehicles comply with regulations and that a certain automaker based in Zhejiang province also used similar fuel tanks in the past. Geely is headquartered in Zhejiang's Hangzhou city. Addressing the accusations that BYD is the auto industry's Evergrande, he said a Hebei-based company had tried numerous times to report BYD to the authorities for financial misconduct, but none were successful, showing the company didn't have these problems. BYD welcomed supervision between peers but reserved the right to pursue legal action against smearing and other malicious behavior, he wrote in a post on Weibo on Sunday, that he later deleted. More stories like this are available on
