Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Great Moments in Corporate Communications: Q-Cells Corrects that "Overindebted, Insolvency" Line in Last Press Release

From the WSJ Europe's The Source blog:
Q-Cells’s Freudian Milestone
Q-Cells SE—a financially ailing German manufacturer of solar energy components—has long been stressing milestone after milestone on its path back to financial health.

But late Monday, the situation seemed to take a turn for the worse. In an English-language press release, after noting another positive achievement, Q-Cells dropped a bomb, saying management considers the company  “over-indebted” and would have to look into filing for insolvency.

But wait; maybe they were getting ahead of themselves. While the possibility may be in the offing, Q-Cells isn’t on the verge of filing for insolvency, they clarified in a phone call before correcting their press release.

The announcement was a Freudian slip that came as a stray paragraph in a press release that Q-Cells sent out to report that creditors had approved a plan to defer the repayment of a convertible bond that would have matured at the end of this month to April 30, giving Q-Cells more time to sort out the remaining debt issues.

The blunder was promptly corrected....MORE