This is rather interesting. John Hempton, who blogs at Bronte Capital, has written a piece describing a visit he made to a factory owned by the behemoth Chinese multinational Hanergy Solar, which crashed a few days ago. Before its shares crashed, its market capitalisation was bigger than all other Chinese solar manufacturers put together. But if Hempton's account is to be believed, the company seems to have been something of a Ponzi scheme:
I went to visit Hanergy's main factory in China about a six weeks ago. It was almost entirely silent. There was essentially no production of solar cells at all and the accounts that suggest significant production and sales are entirely fraudulent.
There was some evidence that someone was exploring starting production - and I will get to that - but the factory was almost entirely idle.
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