China Evergrande Group

So recently we've seen some high profile cases in which billionaires have been imprisoned and even faced capital punishment for stealing money and engaging in other corrupt practices.

In fact, this August, the Chinese government sentenced to life in prison the billionaire CEO and founder of Evergrande, the real estate giant.

Evergrande was previously the most valuable real estate company on earth.

And the CEO of this company, the founder, was one of the richest billionaires on earth.

And he was briefly the richest man in China.

So I've got some more big four bad news.

PwC was the auditor of Evergrande, which is the massive construction company that collapsed a few years ago in China, and that case has been proceeding against PwC for a while now.

We've got an update for you.

A Hong Kong court is refusing to dismiss charges against the international, uh, entity of PwC that's part of, uh, the lawsuit filed by the China Evergrande liquidators against it.

The Deputy High Court Judge, Patrick Fung, called PwC Internationalist evidence supporting dismissal inadequate and unsatisfactory.

This ruling doesn't decide the merits of the claims, it just keeps PwC International on the hook in this case.

So the liquidators might be able to extract money from PwC International for this collapse, which would be a big deal because that means that all the PwC member firms might end up having to pay for PwC China's audit failure.

The liquidators are alleging negligence and misrepresentation in PwC's Evergrande audit work.

Was it August, September 21 when we heard of the first property default out of China with our friends? Was that 21? It was August, September 21 or 22? I

think it was 21 when it started to get Evergrande and people, you know, all the other ones came up with it.

Yeah.

And so don't trust me.

Xi Jinping has this concept that if you are interested in business don't enter politics and if you're interested in politics don't enter business and he's done everything to keep these two worlds apart.

And I wanted to ask you about the head of the housing bubble, the man that created the housing bubble which then collapsed, Evergrande.

He was once the richest man in Asia.

Where is he now?

So yeah, as you said, there's much bigger questions about contagion.

It's got a sort of GFC or Evergrande vibe to it at the moment.

And, you know, there's a lot of debate about was this because of the federal budget? I mean, well, I mean, this news story has been around for quite a long time, to be fair.

Maybe the budget was just the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.

And it's important to mention that HSBC, like Hong Kong, whatever, like you might think it's an Asian bank, but it was set up by the city of London from the get go.

And so it's interesting when the whole Evergrande real estate thing was going down and neocons were pointing at China saying, oh, their economy's wrecked.

They're screwed.

They have nothing.

So, um, I don't know how valid that is, but I can see it very probable just the way that Eastern, like slow time preference, like mine, uh, but just, uh, way, way, way of thinking is just how strategic they are.

So, um, is that something that you thought about or?

No, no, I haven't really put together the Evergrande thing.

But yeah, I mean, HSBC has always been a Jewish bank.