Commentary What would appear to be an American-dream, rags-to-riches story may not have a happy ending for the founder of Evergrande, China’s largest real-estate developer. After rating agency Fitch lowered the company’s rating to near default, the founder’s history of high-leverage business investments may have finally run the company dry. As the company appears to fail on its debt payments, observers have speculated whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will bail out the company. However, with the CCP’s policy of “housing for living in, not for speculation,” Evergrande’s leverage-driven policy that its founder followed for over two decades may also be its downfall. Xu Jiayin, 62, founded Evergrande in 1996. By 2018, it was the most valuable real-estate company in the world, according to the Chinese mouthpiece Xinhua. Xu built the company’s success on leveraging, dipping the company into deep debt that it couldn’t repay at the moment, then counting …
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