By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
You had to know Suniva would come to this, right? Nothing – and I mean nothing – has come easy with this company.
First, it filed a trade complaint, only to get bigfooted to almost an afterthought on its own complaint by its “co-petitioner” SolarWorld. Then it won the case, which led to SolarWorld being purchased by competitor SunPower and Suniva to be…sold for parts.
But now that we had finally moved on to the selling off of assets, even THAT can’t go smoothly for the poor bankrupt module manufacturer. Now two of its creditors are fighting over the production equipment, with one accusing the other of being in the pocket of Canadian Solar and trying to kill the competition (ignoring the obvious fact that Suniva hasn’t produced panel in at least two years).
Will those poor Suniva folks ever catch a break?
SQN Financial, the creditor that once offered to sell out Suniva’s trade case for $55 million to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, has filed a complaint with the bankruptcy court that is overseeing Suniva’s dismantling accusing Lions Point, another Suniva creditor, of trying to force SQN to remove the solar cell production equipment from the company’s former Norcross factory. SQN argues that moving the equipment out of the factory would immediately devalue it (think of the devaluation of driving a new car off the lot) and force SQN to sell the equipment for far less than it is actually worth (in their estimation).
But the most interesting part of the complaint (which you can read below) is the section where SQN explains why IT thinks Lions Point is demanding the equipment be moved. It claims that Lions Point owns a stake in Canadian Solar, a Chinese module manufacturer, that is seven times more valuable than their stake in Suniva. They write in the complaint:
To be sure, according to Lion Point’s filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), Lion Point owns approximately 1,920,085 shares in Canadian Solar—one of the three largest solar companies in the world by revenue—that are valued at approximately $31,239,000(US) and constitutes Lion Point’s fifth largest equity holding. Lion Point also has an outstanding loan to Canadian Solar of approximately $14,341,000(US). Lion Point’s $45 million investment in Canadian Solar stands in stark contrast to its approximately $6 million investment in the Debtor [Editor’s note: Suniva].
As we said, we’re not sure how they can argue Suniva competes with Canadian Solar, given that Suniva hasn’t produced a module in more than two years. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter – the case continues to drag on, leaving scars on Suniva’s former employees that will never fully heal. And that’s a damn shame.
SQNComplaint