The properties were purchased in September 2022, nearly a year after Chinese authorities asked Hui to use his personal wealth to repay Evergrande’s debts, according to UK land registry filings cited by Bloomberg.
While Ding’s ownership was disclosed in a January court filing, the timing of the purchase had not been reported until now.
The London properties, held by Ding through five British Virgin Islands companies, are part of her global real estate portfolio worth over US$350 million, which also includes a record-setting mansion in central London purchased in 2020 and real estate in Vancouver.
Court documents said Ding, 68, currently resides in a GBP5.4 million home, among her priciest purchases, together with two of her children and two grandchildren.
Evergrande’s August 2023 filing no longer listed her as Hui’s spouse, though the exact timing of their divorce remains unclear.
Ding hired Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) as a letting and management agent for her London apartments.
The property group last year sought approval from a U.K. court to continue overseeing the portfolio following the collapse of China Evergrande and the subsequent freezing of Ding’s assets, according to the Financial Times.
The court in January permitted it to handle payments in relation to “meeting the costs of insurance and repairs, replacement and/or repair of fixtures and fittings only where necessary and on a ‘like-for-like’ basis, the payment of ground rent and service charges, and payments for utilities,” and other activities.
Listings on property platform Zoopla show that monthly rents at Thames City range from around GBP3,800 for a one-bedroom unit to over GBP34,000 for a five-bedroom penthouse.
Once ranked as Asia’s second-richest man, Hui and his company Evergrande came to symbolize both the heights and collapse of China’s real estate boom. When the developer defaulted in 2021, it had over $20 billion of offshore debt in issue.
As the property crisis dragged into a fourth year, Evergrande’s vast business empire was ordered into liquidation last year.
Since then, liquidators have been pursuing Hui, Ding, and other former executives of the firm in an effort to reclaim roughly $6 billion in dividends and compensation. They have also obtained an injunction to block them from handling $70 billion worth of global assets, as reported by The Standard.
