China Evergrande's lenders cut exposure

Several of China Evergrande's (3333) largest lenders are reducing their exposure to the debt-laden developer, Bloomberg reports.

China Minsheng Banking Corporation (1988), Evergrande's biggest creditor, told branches to avoid new unsecured loans to the developer and reduce overall financing, including through the bond market, people familiar with the matter said. The move comes amid increased scrutiny from regulators, who have urged Minsheng Bank to improve management of its Evergrande risks after some of the bank's short-term loans lacked sufficient collateral, one of the people said.

At least three other major creditors - including Agricultural Bank of China (1288), China Zheshang Bank (2016) and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (1398) - have adopted similar policies.

Large state-owned lenders will only consider new financing for the developer if it's linked to specific projects with ample collateral and risks that are segregated from Evergrande as a group, the people said.

In other news, Agile (3383) said aggregated pre-sale value in the first three quarters rose 2.4 percent year-on-year to 89.77 billion yuan (HK$103.17 billion). That represented about 75 percent of its full-year sales target of 120 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, Greenland Hong Kong (0337) agreed to purchase Guangzhou Greenland Real Estate Development for 7.26 billion yuan, including an equity consideration of 3.64 billion yuan.

The developer said it owned 35 projects in Guangdong as of the end of June, with 29 of them in the Greater Bay Area.