The billionaire poker club behind China's most indebted developer

Evergrande declined to comment, as did Mr Lau and Mr Cheung via requests sent to their companies. Mr Cheng's New World Development said in a statement that it"conducts transactions only after thorough consideration to serve the best interests of our shareholders and the group".

Mr Hui has attributed Evergrande's stock slide partly to the economic fallout from the pandemic, and partly to"unfair" media coverage of Evergrande's recent profit warning. The media didn't reflect the full picture insomuch as that while earnings slid, Evergrande's profit is still among the top three in the sector, he said during a March 31 briefing.

As the Covid-19 outbreak intensified this year, Mr Hui showed his ambitions extend into the realm of science. He gave roughly US$115 million to Harvard Medical School, its affiliated hospitals and the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases. Encouraged by the prospect of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, Mr Hui left his job at a state-owned steel firm in 1992 and began developing property in southern China. He carved out niches in cities that were overlooked by other big developers, helping to fill in the housing gap for the nation's growing middle class, said Rose Lai, a professor of finance at the University of Macau.

Part of Evergrande's challenge, according to the University of Macau's Prof Lai, is that much of its borrowing for shorter-term debt comes from non-bank lenders, a common form of funding for companies in China that aren't owned by the government. Evergrande's transactions with Lau date back to at least 2009, when the tycoon bought shares in Evergrande's initial public offering. Mr Lau's family and associated entities later invested billions in 2017 as Evergrande's shares rocketed 458 per cent that year, gains that have since largely been erased.

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