In the days just before the solar panel maker Solyndra sought bankruptcy protection, the Obama administration considered another emergency debt restructuring that would have made the government the owner of 35 to 40 percent of the company, according to e-mail messages provided to House investigators.
The reorganization was penciled out by Lazard, an investment banking firm retained by the federal Department of Energy to figure out what options remained after Solyndra had borrowed nearly all of a $535 million line of credit extended by the government and was still years away from profitability. The government would have converted the amount it was owed into equity.
Lazard projected that Solyndra could market its solar modules for more than what it cost to manufacture them by late 2012, and could become quite profitable by 2015. According to Lazard, by that year, the profitability as measured by “earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization,’’ a common financial measure, would be nearly 32 percent.
...the company had drawn down $414 million of the $535 million that the government promised it. But it was selling the panels for far less than they cost to produce because Chinese imports had flooded the market and depressed the price....