SHANGHAI (Reuters) -The spillover effect of China Evergrande Group's debt problems on the banking system is controllable, a central bank official said on Friday, in rare official comments on a liquidity crisis at China's No. 2 developer that has roiled global markets. Chinese authorities are urging Evergrande to step up asset disposals and the resumption of projects, Zou Lan, head of financial markets at the People's Bank of China (PBOC), told a briefing, adding that individual financial institutions did not have highly concentrated exposure to Evergrande. Chinese officials and state media have been largely silent on the crisis at Evergrande, which has missed a series of bond interest payments and has $300 billion in debt, making it the world's most indebted developer.
Chinese property firms watched their bonds take another beating on Friday as the prospect of a wave of defaults in the sector in the wake of China Evergrande's troubles continued to scare off investors. Among a frenzy of developments, advisers for Evergrande bondholders said they had still not heard from the company following its recent missed bond payments. Smaller rival Fantasia appointed advisors after it shocked markets by also missing a payment this week, while both R&F Properties and Xinyuan suffered credit rating downgrades, the latter after it had asked to push back one of its own payments.
In order to justify the effort of selecting individual stocks, it's worth striving to beat the returns from a market...