[4] Evergrande was incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory, and headquartered in the Houhai Financial Center in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China.

[5] In 2018, Evergrande became the most valuable real estate company in the world,[6] but by 2021 it had collapsed financially and started the Chinese property sector crisis.

[8] Initially called the Hongda Group, Evergrande was founded by Hui Ka Yan in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in 1996, during a period of mass urbanization in China.

[9] In October 2009, the company raised $722 million U.S. in an initial public offering on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK).

[19] In September 2023, Bloomberg reported that Hui Ka Yan (Xu Jiayin), the billionaire chairman of Evergrande, was placed under police control.

[20] On 29 January 2024, a Hong Kong-based court ordered Evergrade to liquidate due to a lack of a viable restructuring plan.

[26] In July 2019, the company partnered with State Grid Corporation of China to develop electric vehicle charging stations.

[34][35] In June 2024, Evergrande NEV was ordered by the Chinese government to return 1.9 billion yuan it had received as subsidies from the state due to the company's failure to meet contractual obligations.

However, the listed company portion was renamed into China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Limited in August 2020.

[51][52] Later that year, Evergrande announced it was investing ¥300 million to build more than 110 pig farms in southwestern Guizhou province.

[53] Evergrande Group owned 565 million square meters (6,080 million square feet) of development land and real estate projects in 22 cities, including Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenyang, Wuhan, Kunming, Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Changsha, Nanning, Xi'an, Taiyuan and Guiyang in mainland China.

[63] In 2016, the Hong Kong Market Misconduct Tribunal suspended American short seller and Citron Research founder Andrew Left for five years, due to the publication of a highly critical report on the company, "finding him culpable of disclosing false or misleading information inducing transactions under the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO) in the publication of a research report on Evergrande Real Estate Group Limited (Evergrande) in June 2012.

"[80][81][82] The trading ban "has raised concerns over freedom of speech in Hong Kong's financial markets" according to the New York Times.

[84]: 74  Evergrande responded by increasing its use of supply-side finance, seeking advanced payments from customers for unfinished apartments and expanding its borrowing from suppliers and contractors.

[85][84]: 74 In 2020, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping's government started to tighten the real estate market based on the principle that "property is to be lived in, not to be speculated on.

"[86]: 161  He had previously articulated this principle during the 19th Party Congress and it led to a series of financial rules known as the three red lines.

[84]: 74  In summer of 2021, payments due on its debt, estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars, resulted in the Evergrande liquidity crisis.

[93][94] On 21 October 2021, Evergrande announced that a $2.6 billion asset sale that would have been used to pay an $83 million interest payment it missed in September, 2021 had failed to close.

In addition, there are many completed commercial properties and holdings, such as the headquarters building in Hong Kong, worth around RMB 10 billion.

[98][99] On 17 December 2021, Evergrande was officially declared to be in default by S&P Global after missing a bond payment earlier in the month.

[107] On 28 September 2023, trading in Evergrande shares was suspended after a report was released stating that its chairman, Hui, was under police investigation for suspicion of crimes.