Western investors are getting their fingers burnt after piling into exchange traded funds holding China Evergrande debt in an increasingly desperate hunt for yield.
The world’s most indebted property developer is battling a severe liquidity crisis, which has sent shockwaves across China’s entire property sector and shaken equity markets across the world, particularly affecting a number of bond and equity ETFs.
Evergrande’s share price has slumped 85 per cent in the past three months amid increasing expectations that the company is about to default on some of its $306bn pile of liabilities, equivalent to about 2 per cent of China’s national gross domestic product.