China’s Evergrande faces winding-up petition in H. Kong court

China Evergrande Group will appear once again in Hong Kong court on Monday in an attempt to avoid liquidation, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.

A crackdown three years ago by China on two decades of real estate speculation caused a deepening property crisis and left Evergrande owing $327 billion.

Months later, the firm defaulted on its offshore debt obligations, and a proposal to restructure its debt was rejected last month by creditors.

If the liquidation order issued, a provisional liquidator and then an official liquidator will be appointed to take control and prepare to sell the developer’s assets to repay its debt.

The liquidation would be a major setback for the world’s second-largest economy, already struggling to recover from a draconian zero-COVID policy that kept much of the country in lockdown during the pandemic.