Evergrande, the embattled Chinese real estate developer, said Wednesday that it was selling a stake it held in Shengjing Bank for about $1.5 billion, with the proceeds going toward paying down its debts.
A Chinese state-owned enterprise is buying the stake, worth around 20 percent in the commercial bank.
The move comes as Evergrande, which has unpaid bills totaling more than $300 billion, missed an interest payment on a U.S. dollar bond last week. It has another $45 million payment on an international bond due Wednesday.
Evergrande has yet to address either payment publicly, and it has a 30-day grace period before a missed payment results in a default. Investors have been looking for signs that the Chinese government might step in to bail out the company.
In its filing announcing the Shengjing Bank stake sale, which was signed on Tuesday, Evergrande said that its own liquidity problems had “adversely affected” the bank. Transferring ownership of the stake would help stabilize the bank, which would support the value of a stake of nearly 15 percent that Evergrande will keep.
And as a condition of the sale, Shengjing Bank said that Evergrande would use all of the proceeds to settle its “relevant financial liabilities” with the bank. This flow of funds and the involvement of state-owned entities in the deal may indicate China’s willingness to limit the damage from Evergrande’s cash crunch.
“We believe the Chinese government is involved in some capacity to help resolve the situation,” Adrian Cheng, a director at Fitch Ratings, said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. The credit ratings agency
