Defaulting developer China Evergrande had its remaining 14 percent stake in Shengjing Bank auctioned off on Wednesday, with a consortium of seven mainland firms picking up the equity in the Shenyang lender with a winning bid of RMB 7.3 billion.
Through a sale arranged by a local court, the world’s most indebted builder unloaded its entire interest in the commercial bank to a buyer group consisting of three state-controlled enterprises and four private sector companies, according to the auction page on the Taobao platform. The consortium was the only bidder to enter the contest.
In July, Evergrande told the Hong Kong stock exchange that its Evergrande Group (Nanchang) Co Ltd unit had received an arbitration ruling requiring it to pay RMB 7.3 billion as compensation for loans of an equivalent amount that it had failed to repay to an unnamed creditor, which was the counterparty in the arbitration case.
The loan had been guaranteed by the shares held by Evergrande in Hong Kong-listed Shengjing Bank, with the creditor now entitled to receive the RMB 7.3 billion in proceeds from the sale of Evergrande’s stock in the mainland financial institution.
