Late last night U.S. time, Vivint Solar revealed that it has initiated a lawsuit against SunEdison over the companys alleged willful breach of the merger agreement. In a filing with U.S. financial regulators, Vivint states that it is seeking damages for the benefits its stockholders expected in connection with the transaction as well as attorneys fees.
The exact amount of the damages is to be determined at trial.
In addition to Vivints filing, SunEdison has broken its silence on the termination of the agreement by filing a brief form with financial regulators. SunEdisons SEC filing provides little information that Vivint had not already released, however one detail that emerges in both filings is that SunEdison had failed to obtain financing for the deal.
This suggests that a lawsuit by Hedge Fund Manager David Teppers Appaloosa Management may have derailed the acquisition. Tepper owns a 9.5% stake in SunEdison yieldco TerraForm Power and had sued to prevent SunEdison from transferring Vivints assets to TerraForm. These assets were to act as collateral for a Goldman Sachs loan to finance the acquisition.
Appaloosas lawyers notified the press on February 29 that the judge presiding over its suit had warned Goldman Sachs that he retained the option of stopping the transfer of assets.
For its part, Vivint notes that SunEdisons ability to obtain financing was not a condition of the merger agreement. However, the uncertain liquidity position of SunEdison has caused Deutsche Bank to suspend ratings of the company's stock.
SunEdison claims that it had been in negotiations with Vivint over the potential termination of the acquisition, but that it is unsure what will become of these following Vivints decision to file suit.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Popular content
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.