Archinect - News

China Evergrande ordered into liquidation after $300 billion debt spiral

2024-01-30T19:15:00-05:00

A court in Hong Kong has ordered the winding up of Evergrande Group, the world’s most indebted property developer, dealing another blow to investor confidence as China’s ailing real estate sector continues to weigh on its economy. The liquidation order, made by the city’s High Court on Monday, comes after the embattled Chinese real estate giant and its overseas creditors failed to agree on how to restructure the company’s massive debt during talks that lasted for 19 months.

Evergrande’s liquidation could also set the stage for an unprecedented political showdown between Hong Kong and the mainland, as Reuters speculated on Monday.

The company had amassed over $300 billion in public and private debts since being ordered into negotiations in 2021. Overseas creditors are currently owed a reported $25 billion. Dexter Roberts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, was one of several experts to compare its collapse to the failure of Lehman Brothers in the American market in 2008.

Government is incentivizing development in areas vulnerable to climate change

2019-09-30T13:15:00-04:00

As the effects of climate change grow more apparent, the question of where to build is due to become a significantly more complicated affair.

A case in point comes from a recent report in The New York Times highlighting the ties between financing, land-use, and climate vulnerability.

The report delves into a paper studying the ways in which financial lenders are already shielding themselves from exposure to climate-vulnerable real estate investments by shifting risky mortgages over to the American federal government via institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to The New York Times, because the two entities cannot include risk of natural disaster as part of their mortgage pricing strategy, the move effectively allows the mortgage companies to receive full-rate for investments that might otherwise be worth less than stated. According to the report, the increasing number of mortgages tied up held under this arrangement raises "troubling questions about who will bear th...

AA annual report shows upwards of $1M loss last year

2018-04-04T14:08:00-04:00

The Architectural Association made a loss in excess of £800,000 last year, its annual report has revealed. The cash-strapped school – which made nine redundancies this winter – posted net expenditure of £819,732 for the year ending 31 July 2017, according to accounts due to be filed at Companies House. This compared with a net income of £244,551 in the previous year.

The AA's annual report stated the "Expenditure increased in the year due to one-off costs in governance reform as part of preparation for the TDAP application, together with increased costs of compliance monitoring and property rentals at Bedford Square."

The report also states an income issue with student numbers not meeting their target resulting in a tuition fee income of around $22M for last year.

On a positive note the AA's gender pay gap report showed the school's median female staff salary way equal to its median male salary.

Collapse of UK's second largest construction firm, Carillion

2018-01-16T15:22:00-05:00

A major British construction company is going into liquidation after failing to secure a financial lifeline. Carillion (CIOIF), which employs 43,000 people around the world, said in a statement Monday that rescue talks with stakeholders including the British government had collapsed. "We have been unable to secure the funding to support our business plan, and it is therefore with the deepest regret that we have arrived at this decision," Carillion Chairman Philip Green said in the statement.

With thousands of workers in the UK and Canada, the construction company also builds high speed rail infrastructure, is involved in power distribution projects, and performs road maintenance, hospital management and other government services.

Carillion has hundreds of contracts with the UK government. It was reported to BBC that the government was working on a contingency plan since last year in preparation of Carillion's failure.

Fiona Cincotta, senior market analyst at City Index, commented, "It has been more than surprising, possibly even negligent, that the U.K. government continued to dish out contracts to Carillion even though their future has looked uncertain for some time."

Eight years after the crash, Detroit still contending with foreclosures

2016-08-02T18:14:00-04:00

Nearly 40 percent of Detroit residents live below the poverty line. In many cities, poor people rent — but the home ownership rate here is high. After the 2008 housing crash, it took the city of Detroit five years to start reappraising homes — and poor homeowners like Hicks, who lives on disability, struggled to pay their taxes. Over the past decade, there have been more than 100,000 tax foreclosures in Detroit.

For more news from the Motor City, check out these links:

Could building a giant Helios statue help pull Greece out of its debt crisis?

2015-11-09T13:20:00-05:00

Until an earthquake in 226 BCE knocked it down, the Colossus of Rhodes, a 98-foot-high iron and bronze statue of the Greek god Helios, sat near the harbor of Rhodes, Greece, for 54 years. Now a plan put forth by a small team of scientists seeks to rebuild the ancient statue and boost tourism and local jobs in the process. [...] The proposal also includes an interior library, museum, cultural center, exhibition hall, and, of course, a crowning lighthouse

Learn more about the initiative on the Colossus of Rhodes project site:

The idea of building a contemporary Colossus of Rhodes begun to arise in the ideas of some young professionals, after the break out of the economic crisis in Greece. As unemployment rose and destroyed dreams and ambitions of a whole generation, they tried to work together for a common purpose. Their main task was to make Rhodes a new point of reference for the whole world, to follow a new path and find a solution to the issues that caused such a big sorrow to thousands of people, forced to flee abroad.