Country Garden halts trading of onshore bonds

Chinese property developer Country Garden announced the suspension of trading of a number of its onshore corporate bonds on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange starting from Aug 14, with the resumption time to be decided later, the Hong Kong-listed real estate company said on late Saturday night.

The announcement came after the property market kept going downward, the gross profit margin continued to shrink and the foreign exchange market fluctuated, leaving the company with great challenges.

According to the company, Country Garden will communicate with all shareholders and consider taking various debt management measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of investors.

The group will continue to steadily develop various risk solution measures and business strategies in the future to ensure the long-term development of the group, it said.

The company has established a special working group led by the chairman of board of directors, and a working mechanism to coordinate efforts and promote effective decision-making to help the company get through the hard time, said the announcement.

Country Garden anticipated a loss of between 45 billion yuan ($6.23 billion) and 55 billion yuan for the first half this year, with capital flow under pressure for the moment due to the deterioration of sales and refinancing environment, said the company's H1 financial report issued on Thursday night.

zhengyiran@chinadaily.com.cn