- Evergrande's founder sent a voice note after rumors of his death emerged on Friday, SCMP reported.
- Hui Ka Yan reportedly sent a 50-second clip to executives asking to speed up construction projects.
The founder of Evergrande, the Chinese construction giant, sent a voice note to executives and chaired a meeting on Friday as a rumor that he had killed himself emerged, according to reports.
Hui Ka Yan used a 50-second voice clip on message app WeChat to tell about 100 executives to speed up work on unfinished construction projects and escalate marketing efforts to help restore the company's finances, the South China Morning Post reported.
The clip was released about the same time on Friday afternoon that a rumour began circulating on social media that Hui had jumped off a building in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, the newspaper reported. Spokespeople for Evergrande in Guangzhou declined to comment to the publication.
The chairman also chaired a meeting of Evergrande executives in Guangzhou on Friday night, per the SCMP, which cited a post on the company's website on Friday. Hui was shown in pictures and video talking to employees in the website post, per the report.
"We have delivered 256,000 units between January and November, approaching our targeted 300,000 units in 2022," Hui said in the video, the SCMP reported.
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.
Evergrande was once a pillar of China's construction sector but property 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.
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.
Hui was asked by creditors to hand over $2 billion of his own money to settle a self-imposed deadline for a restructuring proposal, Bloomberg reported last week.
His 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.
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 he tried to liquidate assets to keep paying interest bills.
Evergrande's electric vehicle unit also suspended production this week due to a lack of orders, Reuters reported.
Hui could not be contacted for comment and Evergrande did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.