When Estella Ng, chief financial officer of Guangdong-based property developer Country Garden, turned her eye to the bond markets early this year, she saw an opportunity for the company to strike first and take advantage of abundant liquidity.
Unlike past years, when the bond markets were opened by sovereign or blue-chip borrowers such as the Republic of the Philippines, Hutchison Whampoa, or Export-Import Bank of Korea Kexim, in 2013, it was the bellwether Chinese developer, along with its smaller peer, Kaisa, that set the ball rolling.
Country Garden, one of the biggest mainland developers and majority-owned by Yang Guoqiang, one of China’s richest people, embodied all...