Evergrande chairman Hui Ka Yan.
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The Evergrande founder sent a voice note in an apparent bid to quell rumors, per Bloomberg.
Hui Ka Yan reportedly sent a 50-second clip to executives to encourage construction projects.
Evergrande has debts of $300 billion and faces a collapse in property values in China.
The founder of Evergrande, the Chinese construction giant that has debt of about $300 billion, appeared to resurface on Friday in an apparent attempt to quell rumors about his wellbeing, Bloomberg reported.
Hui Ka Yan used a 50-second voice clip on message app WeChat to tell about 100 executives about the importance of resuming the company’s construction projects, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg.
Rumors about Hui’s safety began to swirl this week on Chinese social media apps. He was asked to hand over $2 billion of his own money by creditors to settle a self-imposed deadline for a restructuring proposal.
Evergrande’s electric vehicle unit also suspended production this week due to a lack of orders, Reuters reported.
The company was once a pillar of China’s property sector but valuations have sunk in recent months and it is laboring under a massive debt mountain of about $300 billion, making it the most indebted developer in the world.
In September Evergrande said it would resume work on all its stalled property projects by the end of the month, the Financial Times reported.
The company said at the time it had 706 developments in China awaiting completion for buyers who had already paid for properties, with work having resumed on 668, per the FT.
Hui’s net worth has plunged from almost $42 billion in October 2017 to about $6.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index. Forbes puts his wealth at $2.9 billion.
Evergrande’s shares crashed and were then suspended in early January after the developer was ordered to demolish 39 buildings in a big development in China’s southern province of Hainan, The Guardian reported.
In October the FT reported that Hui was the real owner of a London property worth about $227 million that had gone on the market as the billionaire tried to liquidate assets to keep paying interest bills.
Hui could not be contacted for comment and Evergrande did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.