As China’s real estate sector watches leviathan Evergrande face a wind-up petition, now another domino has begun to fall. On Sunday, property developer Shimao Group missed the interest and principle payment on a $1 billion offshore bond. It was the first time the developer missed an offshore bond payment.

Shimao is the sixth largest issuer of bonds among Chinese developers, with roughly $6.1 billion in international bonds outstanding.

This is the latest in a series of defaults in China’s property sector, the most prominent of which was the Evergrande Group. China’s biggest developer hit liquidity problems in the summer of 2021, and by later that year had missed four bond payments and been declared officially in default. Shares were eventually suspended from trading, and though reporting is murky, it appeared clear the company should have had the holdings to sell to repay investors and was undergoing restructuring. Events dragged on, until just a week ago they were hit with a winding up petition from a disgruntled investor who said the company had failed to repurchase shares under an agreement they had.

The defaults contagion continued from there. So far of China’s top five issuers, three – Evergrande, Kaisa Group and Sunac China – have defaulted on dollar bonds. Shimao makes it four of the top six.

In a filing on the Hong Kong bourse, Shimao, cited “market uncertainties over debt refinancing” as well as “challenging operating and funding conditions,” in saying it would not be able to pay $1.02 billion in principle and interest to creditors of it’s 4.75% senior notes. It added that it had not made principle payments on other offshore debts, but did not expound on that.

It would appear creditors have not sought enforcement actions, given the developer has not received any notice of acceleration of repayment from its lenders. Shimao has said the majority of the lenders of two syndicated loans finalized in 2018 and 2019, have provided written notices of support. The creditors, said they were “generally supportive of the company continuing to explore the possibility of an agreement and implementation of a potential restructuring with its relevant stakeholders,”, and were supportive of Shimao continuing operations with minimal interference.

The developer has hired Admiralty Harbour Capital and Sidley Austin as financial and legal advisers respectively, to help it navigate the path forward.