China Evergrande Group won breathing room to strike a restructuring agreement with creditors after a Hong Kong court again pushed back a decision on whether the world’s most-indebted property developer should be wound up.

Judge Linda Chan of the city’s High Court adjourned the proceedings to Jan. 29.

Evergrande’s offshore creditors had demanded controlling stakes in the equity of the builder as well as its two Hong Kong subsidiaries as part of the debt discussions.

Evergrande had proposed offering 17.8% of the parent and 30% of each of the subsidiaries — Evergrande Property Services Group and China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group.

The developer now has eight weeks to agree to a deal with offshore bondholders for what would be one of China’s biggest-ever restructurings.

The adjournment was a surprise since Judge Chan had said at the last hearing in late October that "this is really the last adjournment” when granting the latest in a series of delays since proceedings began last year.

The delay comes as China introduces new measures to put a floor under a property market that has been roiled since the introduction of measures three years ago aimed at cutting the industry’s reliance on debt. The International Money Fund warned earlier this year that the trouble could spill over to the financial industry and local government if confidence is not restored.

Evergrande has become a poster child for China’s property crisis since the builder defaulted two years ago. It reported a combined loss of $81 billion in 2021 and 2022.

After several delays in bringing forward a restructuring plan, the Shenzhen-based company tried to secure creditor approval for its offshore-debt proposals in late August before delaying the meetings further, leaving the rescue in limbo.

The developer’s lawyer said earlier this year that Deloitte estimated the recovery rate for the company’s notes would be 3.4% on average if the firm was liquidated, compared with 22.5% in a restructuring.

The petition was filed in June 2022 by Top Shine Global Limited of Intershore Consult (Samoa), which was a strategic investor in the homebuilder’s online sales platform. The petition subsequently became a consolidated class action for other frustrated creditors.

Evergrande’s billionaire chairman Hui Ka Yan, meanwhile, is under police control on "suspicion of illegal crimes,” according to a company statement in September. Three mansions connected to him on Hong Kong’s Peak have been seized by creditors, two of them in recent days.

His company’s restructuring plan in March proposed swapping defaulted debt for either new notes maturing in 10 to 12 years or a combination of new debt and equity-linked instruments.

Its lawyer said in a hearing in October that Evergrande was mulling over a new restructuring proposal, one that would offer new shares in its units to creditors. That argument won what the judge had then called "a final adjournment” of the hearing.