Hong Kong's SFC is pressing ahead with the PwC-Evergrande payout despite a live court challenge

The SFC is distributing a HK$1 billion compensation pool funded by PwC Hong Kong for Evergrande minority shareholders, and it has refused to pause despite a judicial review filed by Evergrande's own liquidators, as coverage of the scheme confirms. The underlying misstatements were not marginal: per the SFC's own findings, Evergrande overstated FY2020 revenue by RMB350 billion, a 69% inflation, and reported a RMB31.4 billion profit in a year when the true result was a RMB19.9 billion loss. The liquidators' legal challenge is substantive, arguing the SFC had no freestanding statutory power to settle misconduct claims with an auditor, which is the AFRC's remit, and that the scheme may prejudice the estate's own potential claims against PwC. The precedent matters beyond the Evergrande carcass: this is Hong Kong's first instance of auditors of a defunct company being compelled to compensate shareholders via a regulator-brokered fund, and if it survives the judicial review it reshapes auditor liability calculus for every Big Four firm running China-exposed Hong Kong listings.