HONG KONG (Reuters) – Cash-strapped developer China Evergrande Group said it held an internal meeting late on Wednesday night, in which its chairman urged company executives to ensure the quality delivery of properties and redemption of wealth management products.
There is mounting political pressure on the company to act as homebuyers and retail investors grow increasingly angry of having sunk their savings in the properties and wealth management products of highly indebted Evergrande.
With $305 billion in liabilities, Evergrande is struggling to meet its debt obligations and investors worry that the rot could spread to creditors including banks in China and abroad.
Global markets were closely watching whether Evergrande will be able to pay interest on one of its dollar bonds due on Thursday, after some relief the previous day when the People’s Bank of China injected 90 billion yuan ($13.9 billion) into the banking system and an Evergrande unit said it had “resolved” a coupon payment on an onshore bond.
At a meeting held at 11:00 pm (1500 GMT), Evergrande chairman stressed to staff the importance to resume constructions and to have a “highly responsible attitude” towards helping wealth investors redeem their products, adding it was the company’s top priority.
The chairman has repeated those messages in several occasions this month, as it has an estimated 40 billion yuan ($6 billion) of wealth management products outstanding and hundreds of thousands of uncompleted homes to deliver to homebuyers.
The company said on Saturday it has begun repaying investors in its wealth management products with real estate, and investors interested in redeeming the products for physical assets should contact their investment consultants or visit local offices.
(Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Ana Nicolaci da Costa)
