Andrew Left banned from trading in HK for saying China Evergrande was insolvent | Hacker News Reader

Andrew Left banned from trading in HK for saying China Evergrande was insolvent

institutionalinvestor.com

87 pointsbaylearn18 comments

Echoes of the Wirecard scandal in Germany, where local regulator BaFin spent much more time suing critics than investigating the company:

https://www.globalcapital.com/article/28mu9tpjsiu015o44foxt/...

Here's the deck that got him banned https://www.slideshare.net/dingli8888/citron-research

Full title (I shortened to 80 characters): Andrew Left Was Banned From Trading in Hong Kong for Saying China Evergrande Group Was Insolvent. Was He Right All Along?

The real estate firm — which Left targeted in a 2012 short report — now faces a reckoning on its $300 billion in liabilities.

Liabilities of roughly $300B on the books only, but there is also their submarine debt which is said to be comparable to what they already have on the books, if not more.

They also practiced Enron style liabilities as assets disguise, so their real total asset-to-liability ratio would be even lower.

From his call in 2012, the stock went up 10x before crashing all the way back down this year.

As usual, being the short guy is a lonely career.... (and a reminder the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent).

He’s lucky he did this in HK. If he was in mainland then he’d be found with “Picking quarrels and provoking trouble”

You are aware that the mainland's new HK security laws allow extraction out of HK for anyone who "threatens national security", i.e. goes against the CCP and their system. [1]

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/hong-kong-nat...

The HK NSL didn't exist in 2012 when the report was released.

So in other words "Chinese authorities confirm Evergrande is insolvent"?

Evergrande has been in trouble for the past half year at least, it's astounding someone's only making a report now, everyone, I mean, EVERYONE, knows the chance of Evergrande would go insolvent is high.

The report is from 2012!

Joke's on me then! Though I doubt anyone shorting can hold that position for this long.

What a twist it would be if Andrew Left goes from GameStop villain to prophetic Evergrande hero all within a year :)

Unlikely. WSB and the like do not possess the necessary mentality to understand that a company may be overvalued.

That’s why Left went long-only in the public eye (more accurately known as pump-and-dump though he didn’t explain step #2)

Am I reading this correctly... this is from 2012? It's incredible to me how long it takes for reports like this to be seen as true by the larger investor community.

If residential property was electronically tradable like stocks, we wouldn’t have insolvent real estate companies get so big as evergrande.

Well, duh! China has been propping up their economy to maintain an unsustainable growth rate. This is just the first *obvious* crack.

Ego - Hui clearly felt he could emulate Jack Ma.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com