When 31% Recovery Is a Thing of Beauty for Bond Holders
Xi Jinping’s microchip dreams for China are built on lots and lots of distressed bonds.
Beijing’s hi-tech ambitions are less golden than debt-ridden
Photographer: Westend61
The most beautiful daughter gets married off first, a Chinese saying goes. But sometimes, a favorite child can be so pampered, so high-maintenance, that she’s homebound well past her prime years. Eventually, everyone starts wondering if she will have any suitors at all.
This is what’s happening at Tsinghua University, the prestigious, nearly 110-year old school that is President Xi Jinping’s alma mater. After defaulting in mid-November, Tsinghua Unigroup Co., a commercial arm and “favorite daughter” of the university, has brought in a government-led working group to diffuse its debt crisis. On Wednesday night, the company warned that it will not be able to repay a $450 million dollar-denominated bond due on Dec. 10.