A German court has opened insolvency proceedings for solar photovoltaic company Q.Cells SE.
Henning Schorisch, lawyer and partner at law firm hww wienberg wilhelm, has been appointed insolvency administrator, after already acting as provisional insolvency administrator. Schorisch intends to continue business operations of the company for the time being.
The opening of the insolvency proceedings transfers the ‘rights of administration and disposition’ – i.e., the management of the company on behalf of the creditors – to the insolvency administrator.
The internal reporting lines will remain intact. The executive board will also remain and will continue to support the insolvency administrator, Q.Cells says.
The opening of the insolvency proceedings also means that Q.Cells SE will no longer receive insolvency benefits, meaning that it will have to pay the wages and salaries of its approximately 1,300 employees by itself. Nevertheless, no job cuts have been announced, given the satisfactory business development seen over the last quarter, the company says.
In the meantime, the next phase of the investor process has begun. Schorisch has invited a number of interested parties to conduct due diligence. At the same time, the option of restructuring the company based on an insolvency plan is still being investigated. The decision on which option will be chosen will be based on which approach offers the best possible satisfaction of creditor claims while enabling the survival of the company, Q.Cells explains.
Q-Cells SE filed for insolvency on April 3 after a decision of the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) of Frankfurt Main removed the legal basis for the financial restructuring measures the company had been striving to implement in the previous months.
