HONG KONG – China Evergrande Group’s flagship unit Hengda Real Estate Group Co Ltd said it will meet onshore bondholders on Friday and Saturday to delay a coupon payment due last September to September of this year.
The property developer said last September it had settled the coupon payment of the 4 billion yuan ($629 million) Shenzhen-traded bond due Sept 23 2025 via negotiations with bondholders, without giving details.
In a filing dated Thursday, Hengda said it would hold meeting with creditors of the 2025 bond on March 18-19 to approve the payment of interests incurred between Sept 2020 to Sept 2021 to be made on Sept 2023.
Struggling with more than $300 billion in liabilities, Evergrande has so far avoided technical bond defaults onshore, though it has missed payments on some offshore bonds.
While it has yet to start negotiations with offshore creditors on debt restructuring, it has tried to seek more time from onshore bondholders for coupon and redemption payments to avoid a technical default.
In January, it secured approval from onshore bondholders to delay by six months payments on a puttable bond <CN149021SZ= > worth 4.5 billion yuan.
($1 = 6.3625 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Clare Jim; editing by Jason Neely)
