Suntech’ Restructure

The photovoltaic industry is one of few emerging industries of China that leads worldwide.Suntech is a benchmark and bellwether in China’s photovoltaic industry.Its legendary startup,rapid development and final downfall make it an optimal management case to observe and study China ’s photovoltaic industry.The author has the honor to participate in the bankruptcy,restructuring and reorganization of Suntech.Combining MBA learning experiences in Xiamen University,the author examines and summarizes the causes and process of Suntech’s startup process,management failures in the later period,and final bankruptcy reorganization.This paper consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 proceeds from the development background of China’s photovoltaic industry,analyzes the process how photovoltaic walked out from the lab to be an industry and the emergence background of China’s photovoltaic industry,and elaborates on basic situations of the photovoltaic industrial chain.Chapter 2 analyzes factors behind the success of Suntech which developed from a startup to a globally leading photovoltaic module supplier.Chapter 3 studies the bankruptcy process of Suntech from four aspects,namely the blasting fuse of the crisis,the financial situations,and the internal and external causes.Chapter 4 looks into the restructuring roadmap of Suntech.Chapter 5 combines management practices of the author to summarize causes of Suntech’s downfall and enlightenments of the case.Major events during 12 years of Suntech’s development course are attached to the end of this paper for the convenience of getting a thorough understanding of Suntech.The success of Suntech should be attributed to the legendary entrepreneurship of Doctor Shi Zhengrong.His pioneering work led the global photovoltaic industrialization tide.Thanks to Doctor Shi,Suntech workers worked together to develop Suntech into a globally renowned photovoltaic brand and the largest photovoltaic module supplier.However,during the process of becoming the globally largest photovoltaic module company,many unwise investment cases had undermined its development.Faced with the debt crisis,Doctor Shi made wrong management decisions,which resulted into Suntech’s bankruptcy reorganization.All in all,Doctor Shi played an important role in both the success and failure of Suntech.Further reflections on management failure of Suntech are of far-reaching significance to sound and orderly development of China’s photovoltaic industry.This is also the research focus of this paper.