A Hong Kong court ordered the liquidation of China Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property developer.

Evergrande has assets of about $245 billion, but owes about $300 billion.

Its demise is a “controlled collapse,” but still raises systemic risk and will hurt investors, says an analyst.

    • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      That’s the problem with investors, if they’re not making more money than last year they find a way to fuck the rest of us. Either they pressure companies to lay off workers, they pressure the government to cut taxes, lower pesky labour and environmental regulations, or just handover cash in the form of a subsidy or bailout.

      Either way they get our money somehow and enshittify our lives. If there’s no hell we’ll need to invent a special kind of justice for these people.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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        9 months ago

        I don’t know if I can really blame the investors themselves for enshittification… I mean, sure, it’s done for their sake but is it their call? They want a return on the investment, but how much say do they have in the companies that actually do the shitty things?

        Then again if I gave money to someone and said “go bring me some milk” and they got me milk, but also murdered everyone they saw along the way, I would definitely not be hiring them again and probably could be in trouble despite not asking for or wanting the murders. If the investors don’t pull out when the company is doing shitty things to make them money, they are definitely evil themselves.

        • piecat@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Fiduciary responsibility. Shareholders/investors can, have, and will, sue.

          That’s where the primary focus is supposed to lie. Legally anyway.

          If selling all the assets and firing all the people could increase the share price for a quarter, they’ll do it.

        • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Sorry I was just watching a video that was explaining that most companies are run by a handful of people who basically each represent several of the largest shareholders combined. I suppose I was imagining these people making the actual decisions and hiring the board and pushing the direction of the company and the lobbying efforts as the “investors”.

          You’re right I don’t mean we should commit war crimes against grandpa because he has a pension fund lol

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Probably won’t hurt the investors, they’ll get paid. But all the individual contractors who worked for the company are very unlikely to actually see payment.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      9 months ago

      The company owes $300B on $245B of assets. Unsecured creditors are among the last on the list to be paid back, and at least some of those are contractors who did work for the company and haven’t been paid yet.

    • BigDill99@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Hurts the customers, like lower-middle class people that put their life savings down to buy a home and never got one.

    • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      “investors” in this case include middle class Chinese citizens, I think that’s worth caring about