Nearly three years after China Evergrande Group began winding up, liquidators have recovered less than 1% of the $46 billion owed to creditors and aim to start distributing payments in the first half of 2027. Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong of Alvarez & Marsal Inc. said they have raised about HK$3.4 billion (US$433 million) as of Sept. 30, publishing a detailed breakdown of recovered assets such as aircraft, artwork and club memberships. The firm’s dramatic collapse has become an emblem of China’s prolonged property crisis.
Creditors have faced many twists, including founder Hui Ka Yan’s life sentence in August. The liquidators, handling 3,000 legal entities and 1,300 projects across 280+ cities, are adjudicating 200 debt claims and negotiating the sale of a majority stake in Evergrande’s property‑management unit, with Asian private‑equity firm PAG in talks. Challenges remain: assets like a Guangzhou‑based Airbus A319 jet and Picasso/Monet paintings have been hard to sell, with the latter fetched HK$255 million at a loss.
Recovery of mainland‑China subsidiary assets is “remote” due to limited access, and over 650 entities are in bankruptcy. Middleton and Wong have sued former executives for $6.5 billion in dividends and target $8.5 billion from PwC, while also challenging a HK$1 billion fund set up by PwC’s Hong Kong affiliate. The case marks one of the largest corporate claims in Hong Kong history.
Source: Bloomberg Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing