Country Garden, Chinese Real Estate Giant, to Miss Debt Payments

The embattled property developer Country Garden said it was unable to repay a loan and that it expects to miss upcoming overseas debt payments as a result of plunging sales from China’s spiraling property crisis.

The announcement, made Tuesday on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, is effectively a statement from Country Garden, once China’s largest homebuilder, that it will likely default with roughly $187 billion in liabilities. Country Garden is one of the biggest causalities of China’s collapsing real estate market that has sent Evergrande, another giant property developer, into bankruptcy.

Country Garden had been scrambling over the last few months to stave off a collapse, selling off assets to raise cash and negotiating with creditors to restructure liabilities or delay payments. But the company’s unabated struggle in selling new apartments has throttled the cash flow necessary to stay on top of debt payments.

Last month, when Country Garden announced that it had managed to make a closely watched interest payment to avoid default, the company said it still needed to repay nearly $15 billion in debt within the next 12 months in the form of bonds, notes, and bank and other borrowings.