
16 Introduction to SolarPowerfortheWorld
and SunPower made a loss of $0.35 billion. It has almost become
standard in the PV module industry that the companies’ debt
accumulates to a multiple of their stock market equity. At the
end of 2012, LDK, China, had a debt of $3.6 billion, Suntech $2.3
billion and SolarWorld, Germany, e1 billion. Quite a few of these
once-prestigious companies would have been bankrupt by normal
criteria. Interestingly, even the German PV journal Photon, the voice
of the global PV industry, had to declare insolvency.
It is important to note that Chinese module manufacturers were
as much concerned by this downturn in the industry ...