Shares in China’s Evergrande plunge as deal collapses - Al Jazeera English

Shares of China Evergrande Group, the world’s second-largest economy’s most indebted property developer, have plunged as much as 14 percent when they resumed trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange following a two-week suspension.

Thursday’s opening bell sell-off came after Evergrande announced that a deal to sell a $2.6bn stake in its property services unit had fallen through.

Evergrande said on Wednesday it had scrapped a deal to sell a 50.1 percent stake in Evergrande Property Services Group to Hopson Development Holdings, a Hong Kong firm, because the smaller rival had not met the “prerequisite to make a general offer”.

Evergrande was first listed in Hong Kong in 2009, raising 70.5 billion Hong Kong dollars ($9bn) in its initial public offering in a debut that made it China’s largest private property company and its founder, Xu Jiayin, the mainland’s richest man at the time.

One of China’s largest property firms Evergrande has debts of more than $300bn. .