Suntech Directors Quit Saying Solar Maker Has No Business Plan

August 28, 2013 Leave a comment

Suntech Directors Quit Saying Solar Maker Has No Business Plan

Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP), the Chinese solar manufacturer whose main unit was pulled into bankruptcy earlier this year, said three directors including the former chairwoman quit saying the company had no business plan. Susan Wang, Julian Worley and Zhizhong Qiu resigned on Aug. 21, saying they weren’t provided with information they needed to fulfill their responsibilities, the Wuxi, China-based company said today in a statement. Michael Nacson replaced Wang as chair, who took the post in March, Suntech said. The resignations highlight the divisions that have plagued the company’s management and come less than six months after Suntech founder Shi Zhengrong was ousted as chairman. Nacson was appointed to the board last month by Suntech’s bondholders.“The matters of concern cited by the resigning directors are demonstrative of disharmony and issues of communication between the executive management and the resigning directors that decreased the efficiency of the board’s decision-making process,” the remaining independent directors Philip Fan, Nacson and Kurt Metzger, said in the statement.

The former directors cited concern about cashflow, a lack of clear business plan and failure to pay lawyers among concerns, Suntech said in the statement. They were also concerned about the potential erosion of internal controls and the impairment of employees’ ability to function effectively.

The biggest unit of Suntech, once the world’s largest solar-panel maker, was forced into bankruptcy in March after the company defaulted on $541 million of bonds.

Nacson, Fan, Metzger, Weiping Zhou, Shi and David King continue to serve as directors of the company, according to the statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Paton in Sydney at jpaton4@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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