Evergrande, a Chinese property giant nursing more than $300 billion in debt, is seen as likely to default next week. Global investors don’t seem too worried, but the looming crunch still has potential to shake up financial markets, analysts warned.
“While Evergrande’s bonds and shares have sold off, spillovers to other assets, both in and outside of China, have so far been limited, suggesting that investors are confident the country’s authorities will limit any financial contagion,” said Thomas Mathews, markets economist at Capital Economics, in a note.
Fears of a bursting property bubble have long been a concern for investors when it comes to China. A heavily leveraged real-estate sector makes up more than 28% of China’s economy, according to the Financial Times.
And Evergrande’s dire situation is sparking debate over how Chinese authorities should respond. Meanwhile, holders of Evergrande’s approximately $19 billion in dollar-denominated bonds are left to wonder what will become of their investments. And shares of Evergrande
3333,
have plunged 83% in Hong Kong.
Global markets have been largely unswayed. Major U.S. stock indexes were on track for weekly losses, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
down 0.1% and the S&P 500
SPX,
on track for a 0.5% decline. Those modest losses, however, have been largely attributed to worries equities were overdue for a pullback amid uncertainty over the toll of the spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus.
Should investors be paying more attention to the Evergrande situation?
FitchRatings, a credit ratings firm, on Sept. 7 downgraded Evergrande’s rating to CC from CCC+, indicating they saw some sort of default as probable. Evergrande is one of China’s top three property developers, although the residential housing market is highly fragmented, Fitch analysts noted in a Sept. 14 report.
Evergrande’s market share in 2020 was only around 4%. Fitch said the risk of significant pressure on house prices in the event of a default would be low, unless the restructuring or liquidation of its assets becomes disorderly. “Fitch believes this is something the authorities will want to avoid,” the analysts wrote.
But faith in that scenario may have been shaken after Reuters reported that the editor of the state-backed Global Times newspaper had warned that Evergrande shouldn’t assume it’s “too big to fail.”
Analysts at UBS, led by Kamil Amin, said in a Thursday note that the potential for market spillovers will depend on whether Evergrande restructures or fully liquidates. The analysts wrote what they remained confident that a restructuring remained the most probable outcome.
“In the event of a restructuring, we expect the bonds to bounce off their lows and contagion to be broadly limited,” they said.
But in the event of liquidation, there…
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