Chinese firm Evergrande shares sink by 80%

Embattled Chinese company Evergrande shares have dropped by about 80% as they began trading in Hong Kong for the first time in a year and a half.

Evergrande shares have lost over 99% of their value in the previous three years as Beijing cracked down on property companies.

Evergrande is in a real estate market threatening the planet’s second-largest economy. On Sunday, the company reported a loss of 33bn yuan ($4.5bn; £3.6bn) for the year’s first six months.

However, that improved the 66.4bn yuan loss it said for the same period a year before. The firm’s “directors have taken several measures to improve the group’s liquidity and financial position,” Evergrande stated in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

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The company added that its earnings for the first six months of this year had climbed by 44% to 128.2bn yuan from a year before. However, its cash stockpile slipped by 6.3% over the same period. Evergrande shares had been adjourned from trading since March last year.

“The key for policymakers now is to prevent financial contagion and limit spillover into the overall financial system,” Qian Wang, chief Asia Pacific economist at Vanguard, told the BBC.

“Policymakers will need to provide further liquidity and credit support to the economy and the real estate sector,” she continued.