Huarong, China’s biggest bad debt manager, has released a long-awaited financial report that outlines a record Rmb103bn ($16bn) loss last year, ending a five-month delay that sparked a debate over Beijing’s approach to corporate failure.
The company, which earlier this month confirmed plans for a bailout from state-backed businesses including conglomerate Citic, said its leverage ratio leapt to 1,333 times by the end of 2020 as losses wiped out most of its equity.
The belated release of the results, which were initially due in April, comes after a chaotic period for a company that was launched in the late 1990s to help clean up the banking system, but saw its former chair Lai Xiaomin executed in January for accepting Rmb1.8bn in bribes after years of expansion.