Bankers Fearing Crisis at New World Sealed $11 Billion Loan Deal
New World Development Co. has secured a record $11 billion refinancing deal, averting a potential crisis in Hong Kong's property market, where prices have been declining for four years and office vacancies are around a record high.
The deal was pushed through after months of negotiations, with bankers and regulators applying pressure on lenders to agree, citing the potential consequences of the deal failing, including a 7% hit to local home prices this year alone.
Despite the deal, Hong Kong's economy still faces significant risk, with developers remaining overly indebted, and more companies likely to need reorganization, while New World itself will be under pressure to sell assets and trim its debt.
Nobody wanted to be the banker who tipped Hong Kong’s fragile property market into crisis.
For New World Development Co., the real estate giant locked in monthslong negotiations over a record $11 billion refinancing, fear of what might happen if the package fell through was a major factor pushing lenders to agree on a deal set to be finalized as soon as Monday.
The stakes were so high that some bankers pitched the deal to their credit committees not by emphasizing the strengths of the company but the ramifications of its failure. New World’s roughly $40 billion of Hong Kong assets are worth around a tenth of the city’s annual gross domestic product, according to Barclays Plc, raising the specter of a painful economic shock if it couldn’t roll over its debt. The hit to local home prices may have been as much as 7% this year alone, according to S&P Global Ratings.
Bankers who worked on the deal say it crossed the line only after pressure from their peers, calls and meetings with regulators, frustration from bondholders and a last-ditch attempt to win over small banks who had initially rejected the plan.
The company has given itself — and Hong Kong — a reprieve. But the high stakes nature of the deal, and the numerous hurdles it had to clear along the way, show how bad things have become in a real estate market where prices have been declining for four years in a row and office vacancies are around a record high.
“While the company may have dodged a bullet, Hong Kong’s economy still faces significant risk,” said Brock Silvers, managing director at private equity firm Kaiyuan Capital. “Developers remain overly indebted, and more companies are likely to need reorganization.”
Bankers are now turning their attention to what comes next for the company. New World has around $8 billion of bonds outstanding, and investors expect it to soon make an offer for some of those bonds or request more time to repay them. It is planning another loan worth around $2 billion to help it pay back debt. It is also under pressure to plow ahead with asset sales, a crucial means of raising money to pay back its lenders.
原來唔借錢比新世界好撚大獲 彭博報導
東升西降
253 回覆
35 Like
32 Dislike
This story of how New World avoided an imminent crisis — one that could have dwarfed the failure of China Evergrande Group, considering the relative size of Hong Kong’s economy — is based on interviews with more than a dozen people, almost all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details are private.
New World didn’t respond to a request for comment.
When property industry veteran Echo Huang took over New World on November 29, becoming the company’s third chief executive in as many months, she had an unenviable task. New World’s share price had lost over 80% in five years. It had just booked its first annual loss in two decades. Debt maturities were looming, and a property slump in both Hong Kong and mainland China was holding back asset sales.
In January, New World executives went to bankers with a high stakes plan. The company would consolidate its outstanding loans into one big deal, allowing it to avoid a steady drip of maturities over the next few years. The consolidated deal would be worth HK$87.5 billion ($11.1 billion), making it the biggest loan ever signed in Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg-compiled data.
The refinancing relied on all of New World’s lenders — from big relationship banks to tiny firms who bankers said had extended $10 million or less — agreeing to give the company breathing room. New World could only go ahead if it got 100% approval from lenders.
That set off months of backroom negotiations.
Two bankers said that when they pitched the deal to their credit committees, they didn’t focus on the positives of the company but instead on the potential consequences of the deal failing. They gave presentations detailing how much banks would have to set aside to cover loan losses, and the risk of a ripple effect that would spread pain throughout Hong Kong’s real estate sector.
New World itself took a similar approach. The company had conversations with banks that originally wanted to exit, making sure they understood the consequences of a failed deal and its impact on Hong Kong’s banking sector, according to people familiar with the matter. Bankers said that added to pressure from other lenders.
New World’s bigger lenders, who had the most to lose from a potential default, were among the early backers of the deal. Bank of China Ltd., DBS Group Holdings and HSBC Holdings were chosen as contact banks, although New World arranged the refinancing and tallied the commitments itself, the people said.
New World didn’t respond to a request for comment.
When property industry veteran Echo Huang took over New World on November 29, becoming the company’s third chief executive in as many months, she had an unenviable task. New World’s share price had lost over 80% in five years. It had just booked its first annual loss in two decades. Debt maturities were looming, and a property slump in both Hong Kong and mainland China was holding back asset sales.
In January, New World executives went to bankers with a high stakes plan. The company would consolidate its outstanding loans into one big deal, allowing it to avoid a steady drip of maturities over the next few years. The consolidated deal would be worth HK$87.5 billion ($11.1 billion), making it the biggest loan ever signed in Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg-compiled data.
The refinancing relied on all of New World’s lenders — from big relationship banks to tiny firms who bankers said had extended $10 million or less — agreeing to give the company breathing room. New World could only go ahead if it got 100% approval from lenders.
That set off months of backroom negotiations.
Two bankers said that when they pitched the deal to their credit committees, they didn’t focus on the positives of the company but instead on the potential consequences of the deal failing. They gave presentations detailing how much banks would have to set aside to cover loan losses, and the risk of a ripple effect that would spread pain throughout Hong Kong’s real estate sector.
New World itself took a similar approach. The company had conversations with banks that originally wanted to exit, making sure they understood the consequences of a failed deal and its impact on Hong Kong’s banking sector, according to people familiar with the matter. Bankers said that added to pressure from other lenders.
New World’s bigger lenders, who had the most to lose from a potential default, were among the early backers of the deal. Bank of China Ltd., DBS Group Holdings and HSBC Holdings were chosen as contact banks, although New World arranged the refinancing and tallied the commitments itself, the people said.
Smaller lenders proved harder to convince. Macau’s Banco Nacional Ultramarino was among the hold-outs in the weeks before the deal signed, according to people familiar with the matter. Hong Kong lenders Chiyu Banking Corp Ltd. and Nanyang Commercial Bank Ltd. also initially resisted, since they wanted to reduce their commercial real estate exposure, said two people.
HSBC declined to comment. Bank of China, DBS, Banco Nacional Ultramarino, Chiyu Banking Corp and Nanyang Commercial Bank didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Containing Risks
With only weeks to go before the deadline, the vast majority of banks were on board. But since the financing depended on 100% approval, even small holdouts had the power to topple the deal.
Some Chinese bankers heard from their bosses in the mainland. Senior officials at a medium-sized bank told their colleagues in Hong Kong to roll over the loan unless there was something “dramatically wrong,” said a person working on the bank’s credit desk. That set the tone for discussions about the loan internally, he said.
Lenders also received phone calls or meeting requests from officials at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s banking regulator and de facto central bank, said multiple people. The HKMA didn’t order banks to roll over the loan but asked them for an update on how the deal was going, and what their concerns were.
Several bankers said they read this as informal pressure to get the deal done, although it’s not unusual for banking regulators to conduct dialogue with market participants during high-profile deals.
An HKMA spokesperson said the regulator couldn’t comment on individual companies, but said it had long required banks to manage credit risk prudently and ensure the appropriate and timely classification and provisioning of loans.
HSBC declined to comment. Bank of China, DBS, Banco Nacional Ultramarino, Chiyu Banking Corp and Nanyang Commercial Bank didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Containing Risks
With only weeks to go before the deadline, the vast majority of banks were on board. But since the financing depended on 100% approval, even small holdouts had the power to topple the deal.
Some Chinese bankers heard from their bosses in the mainland. Senior officials at a medium-sized bank told their colleagues in Hong Kong to roll over the loan unless there was something “dramatically wrong,” said a person working on the bank’s credit desk. That set the tone for discussions about the loan internally, he said.
Lenders also received phone calls or meeting requests from officials at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s banking regulator and de facto central bank, said multiple people. The HKMA didn’t order banks to roll over the loan but asked them for an update on how the deal was going, and what their concerns were.
Several bankers said they read this as informal pressure to get the deal done, although it’s not unusual for banking regulators to conduct dialogue with market participants during high-profile deals.
An HKMA spokesperson said the regulator couldn’t comment on individual companies, but said it had long required banks to manage credit risk prudently and ensure the appropriate and timely classification and provisioning of loans.
The spokesperson said that when banks are dealing with borrowers facing financial difficulties, they are expected to follow a set of guidelines issued in 1999 and “adopt a sympathetic stance.” Similar guidelines have been introduced in other countries, the spokesperson added.
The widespread pressure to get the deal done underscores New World’s importance to Hong Kong’s real estate market, where it has built scores of apartment blocks and owns iconic assets including the sprawling commercial complex Victoria Dockside along Hong Kong’s famous harbor.
“If it went bust, how could the government get enough investors to participate in its land sales to fund infrastructure projects?” said Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis. “It didn’t want the risk to spread. It wanted it contained.”
New World makes up around 7% of overall property development and investment loans in Hong Kong’s banking system, according to Wilson Ho, an analyst at Barclays Plc. That and other metrics make New World twice as systemically important to Hong Kong as China Evergrande Group was to mainland China, before Evegrande’s default in late 2021 added fuel to a property downturn that is still not fully over.
The refinancing talks were further complicated by New World’s decision to defer interest payments on more than $3 billion of perpetual bonds in May. Debt adviser PJT Partners Inc. called for bond investors to oppose the loan refinancing, since it meant they would lose out on collateral.
But last week, the remaining hold-outs had been convinced to join. New World secured written commitments just days before the deadline, Bloomberg reported, leaving only a few procedural steps before the deal was closed.
The refinancing agreement will push back HK$63.4 billion of borrowings that were set to come due this year and next, extending the maturities for three years. For HK$24.1 billion in loans due in 2027 and beyond, the maturities will remain the same, but New World will have to add some credit enhancements and put up additional collateral.
Painful Slump
The deal has averted a moment of panic in Hong Kong’s real estate sector, but it hasn’t ended the pain.
Property prices in the city have fallen around 30% over the past four years, and are now around a nine-year low. The number of households in negative equity is at a more than twenty-year high, risking a self-perpetuating loss of confidence. The Hong Kong banking system’s overall loan-to-deposit ratio is around its lowest level since the global financial crisis.
There are some reasons for guarded optimism: Hong Kong’s government has taken steps to stem the pain, lowering property taxes and easing mortgage rules. Plunging interbank rates may encourage more mortgage borrowing. Morgan Stanley thinks the sector may be reaching a bottom, in part because of demand from mainland Chinese homebuyers.
The Federal Reserve may also help. Since Hong Kong maintains a peg against the dollar, the HKMA typically tracks interest rate decisions by the US central bank. Hopes that the Fed might cut rates sooner than expected gave Hong Kong developers’ stocks a boost last week, helping push up New World’s share price by 8.5% in one day.
But the slump may get worse before it gets better. Banks are tightening the screws on mid-sized developers which have at least $22 billion in debt, demanding stricter refinancing terms or deciding to halt new lending altogether. Some developers are selling projects at a discount or even a loss. And as for New World, analysts say that even after the deal, it will be under pressure to sell assets and trim its debt.
“It is still unclear when we will see the end of the tunnel,” said Patrick Ho, head of investment at Centaline Family Office.
— With assistance from Shirley Zhao, Denise Wee, and Kiuyan Wong
The widespread pressure to get the deal done underscores New World’s importance to Hong Kong’s real estate market, where it has built scores of apartment blocks and owns iconic assets including the sprawling commercial complex Victoria Dockside along Hong Kong’s famous harbor.
“If it went bust, how could the government get enough investors to participate in its land sales to fund infrastructure projects?” said Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis. “It didn’t want the risk to spread. It wanted it contained.”
New World makes up around 7% of overall property development and investment loans in Hong Kong’s banking system, according to Wilson Ho, an analyst at Barclays Plc. That and other metrics make New World twice as systemically important to Hong Kong as China Evergrande Group was to mainland China, before Evegrande’s default in late 2021 added fuel to a property downturn that is still not fully over.
The refinancing talks were further complicated by New World’s decision to defer interest payments on more than $3 billion of perpetual bonds in May. Debt adviser PJT Partners Inc. called for bond investors to oppose the loan refinancing, since it meant they would lose out on collateral.
But last week, the remaining hold-outs had been convinced to join. New World secured written commitments just days before the deadline, Bloomberg reported, leaving only a few procedural steps before the deal was closed.
The refinancing agreement will push back HK$63.4 billion of borrowings that were set to come due this year and next, extending the maturities for three years. For HK$24.1 billion in loans due in 2027 and beyond, the maturities will remain the same, but New World will have to add some credit enhancements and put up additional collateral.
Painful Slump
The deal has averted a moment of panic in Hong Kong’s real estate sector, but it hasn’t ended the pain.
Property prices in the city have fallen around 30% over the past four years, and are now around a nine-year low. The number of households in negative equity is at a more than twenty-year high, risking a self-perpetuating loss of confidence. The Hong Kong banking system’s overall loan-to-deposit ratio is around its lowest level since the global financial crisis.
There are some reasons for guarded optimism: Hong Kong’s government has taken steps to stem the pain, lowering property taxes and easing mortgage rules. Plunging interbank rates may encourage more mortgage borrowing. Morgan Stanley thinks the sector may be reaching a bottom, in part because of demand from mainland Chinese homebuyers.
The Federal Reserve may also help. Since Hong Kong maintains a peg against the dollar, the HKMA typically tracks interest rate decisions by the US central bank. Hopes that the Fed might cut rates sooner than expected gave Hong Kong developers’ stocks a boost last week, helping push up New World’s share price by 8.5% in one day.
But the slump may get worse before it gets better. Banks are tightening the screws on mid-sized developers which have at least $22 billion in debt, demanding stricter refinancing terms or deciding to halt new lending altogether. Some developers are selling projects at a discount or even a loss. And as for New World, analysts say that even after the deal, it will be under pressure to sell assets and trim its debt.
“It is still unclear when we will see the end of the tunnel,” said Patrick Ho, head of investment at Centaline Family Office.
— With assistance from Shirley Zhao, Denise Wee, and Kiuyan Wong
TLDR
樓主可否總結下篇文
大家細閱一下 一定有啟發
而且依家AI 好方便 好快搵到重點
入面好多爆料
而且依家AI 好方便 好快搵到重點
入面好多爆料
憑實力借點解要還
你當我係ChatGPT?
On9
On9
可以話係個來龍去脈
正常情況就其實唔會再借
不過好多因素加埋銀行焗住繼續玩
正常情況就其實唔會再借
不過好多因素加埋銀行焗住繼續玩
旦凡大企業總係借落一大筆債
就好似金手指入邊咁，多D資金先可以擴充業務/維持營運
借得多賺得多
就好似金手指入邊咁，多D資金先可以擴充業務/維持營運
借得多賺得多
香港新世界發展達成110億美元貸款協議，避免債務危機加劇樓市崩盤。其資產占香港GDP一成，破產恐致房價暴跌。銀行與監管機構施壓促使小銀行妥協。香港樓市仍面臨四年跌勢、高負債及辦公樓空置問題，新世界需加速賣產還債。分析指危機未解，中小開發商融資更嚴峻。
（共100字，含標點）
簡單D講, 佔香港GDP一成
一老破就會引發資產連環破
大到不能倒系列
（共100字，含標點）
簡單D講, 佔香港GDP一成
一老破就會引發資產連環破
大到不能倒系列
新世界：你唔借就變壞帳，借咗仲有得救
Two bankers said that when they pitched the deal to their credit committees, they didn’t focus on the positives of the company but instead on the potential consequences of the deal failing. They gave presentations detailing how much banks would have to set aside to cover loan losses, and the risk of a ripple effect that would spread pain throughout Hong Kong’s real estate sector.
Two bankers said that when they pitched the deal to their credit committees, they didn’t focus on the positives of the company but instead on the potential consequences of the deal failing. They gave presentations detailing how much banks would have to set aside to cover loan losses, and the risk of a ripple effect that would spread pain throughout Hong Kong’s real estate sector.
唔救新世界將對本地樓價造成高達7%打擊
新世界發展有限公司成功達成一項創紀錄的 110億美元再融資協議，暫時緩解了香港房地產市場可能爆發的危機。該市場已連續四年下跌，辦公室空置率接近歷史高位。由於擔心若交易失敗將對本地樓價造成高達7%的打擊，銀行及監管機構紛紛向貸款方施壓，迫使這項協議得以在多月談判後敲定。
儘管交易落實，新世界及整個行業的壓力仍未解除。新世界將需進一步賣資產、減債，並計劃再籌得20億美元貸款。同時，公司尚有約80億美元債券未償，投資者預料將收到展期或收購的提議。
這項交易揭示了香港樓市風險仍高，開發商普遍負債過重，未來或有更多企業需要重組。正如一位投資專家所言：雖然新世界避免了「爆雷」，但香港經濟尚未脫離危機邊緣。
新世界發展有限公司成功達成一項創紀錄的 110億美元再融資協議，暫時緩解了香港房地產市場可能爆發的危機。該市場已連續四年下跌，辦公室空置率接近歷史高位。由於擔心若交易失敗將對本地樓價造成高達7%的打擊，銀行及監管機構紛紛向貸款方施壓，迫使這項協議得以在多月談判後敲定。
儘管交易落實，新世界及整個行業的壓力仍未解除。新世界將需進一步賣資產、減債，並計劃再籌得20億美元貸款。同時，公司尚有約80億美元債券未償，投資者預料將收到展期或收購的提議。
這項交易揭示了香港樓市風險仍高，開發商普遍負債過重，未來或有更多企業需要重組。正如一位投資專家所言：雖然新世界避免了「爆雷」，但香港經濟尚未脫離危機邊緣。
寧願佢爆
香港依家就係差一下刺激起死回生
香港依家就係差一下刺激起死回生
唔怪之得雞扒妹un un腳輕輕鬆鬆咁
你地同我諗掂佢,籌期失敗嘅話,係你地仆街,唔係我仆街
你地同我諗掂佢,籌期失敗嘅話,係你地仆街,唔係我仆街
細行都被迫上船
即係香港版恆大
Too big to fail 
全香港無物業嘅人同一希望
拖得幾耐
淨係想佢爆成班吸血鬼收成期 
垃圾地方邊個住
垃圾地方邊個住If I burn, you burn with us