Less than one month after its parent company, Konarka Technologies Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection, the company's German subsidiary, Konarka Technologies GmbH, says it is facing the threat of insolvency and has filed for bankruptcy with the Nuremberg District Court.
The parent company's bankruptcy received its fair share of attention from the media, which dubbed the thin-film solar module developer ‘Romney's Solyndra’ after the Obama campaign brought to light that Konarka had received $1.5 million in funding in 2003 from Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who was then the governor of Massachusetts.
According to a statement from the company, Konarka Technologies GmbH"has been forced to file for bankruptcy," as part of its parent company's liquidation proceedings pursuant to the Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing. The company's German subsidiary is responsible for research and European sales.
Attorney Alexander Kubusch of national German insolvency administration firm CURATOR AG – who has been appointed as the preliminary insolvency administrator – is optimistic that operations will continue.
‘We can sustain the R&D work in Germany without any difficulties at the moment," Kubusch says." Nonetheless, our objective must be to find a suitable investor as quickly as possible who's prepared to get the company's first-class development work back on track again and to guarantee its production operations and future developments in the long term, because a successful transfer of the U.S. parent group is currently still very much up in the air.
‘If, however, we are able to find an investor and also keep the existing, as well as government research, contracts in the company, I have every confidence that the company will be able to keep going long term at its Nuremberg site,’ he adds.
