Displaying items by tag: evergrande

Evergrande’s crisis has been all over the news in the last month, but it appears there is contagion in the high yield debt market. The bond market sell off, particularly from off-shore investors has spread to companies like Tencent and financial companies like Bank of Communication Hong Kong. This has pushed the ICE BofA Asian Dollar High Yield Corporate China Issuers Index to over 25%, which is the peak yield for the index since 2008. Sparking the yield climb is a combination of regulation, high leverage, and low liquidity. A bump in liquidity from the Chinese central bank has calmed domestic investors, but ultimately government policy will have to lighten up for yields to start to fall.

FINSUM: The endless regulation is spilling into the rest of the economy in China, and no amount of liquidity provisions will bring back outside investors. Rather, China needs to loosen the grip if they want to give companies a chance at refinancing their debt moving forward.

China’s giant real estate group Evergrande Real Estate Group is in hot water. While they may be China’s second-largest real estate holding company, they are the world’s most indebted as their balance sheet carries an excess of $300 billion in liabilities. Despite this, some of the most prominent investment firms such as BlackRock, UBS, and HSBC Holdings have all bought up their debt. Evergrande’s bonds are trading at 25 cents on the dollar. BlackRock, for example, has increased its holdings from 12.2 million units to 43.5 million YTD and is now nearly 1% of its portfolio. Evergrande is taking measures like discounting apartments, parking spaces, or retail property to pay back its debt as notes are beginning to reach their maturity. Many investors are expecting Chinese authorities to step in to accommodate the debt by either rolling it over or taking other measures.

FINSUM: There is certainly safer debt to hold, but many investment firms see Evergrande as a buy and a risk worth taking because it may be too big to fail.