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Bloomberg
Ahmad Chatila, chief executive officer of bankrupt clean-energy giant SunEdison Inc., resigned on Weddnesday.
SunEdison appointed John Dubel, the company’s chief restructuring officer since late April, to replace Chatila, according to a statement on Wednesday. Dubel joined SunEdison shortly after it filed for bankruptcy protection, listing $16.1 billion in liabilities.
Chatila was the architect of a massive clean-power buying-binge. In a two-year period, SunEdison bought wind and solar farms on every continent except Antarctica, creating the world’s biggest renewable-energy developer.
SunEdison relied on cheap debt from lenders and financial engineering to fuel its growth.
It also formed two publicly traded holding companies, called yieldcos, to buy its and other developers’ operating clean-energy assets.
Chatila’s exit comes about two months after the company filed for bankruptcy, and a few weeks after the exit of Brian Wuebbels, chief financial officer at the time of the bankruptcy filing.
The odds of Chatila holding his job through the bankruptcy were slim. More than 80 percent of CEOs leave by the end of restructuring, B. Espen Eckbo, a finance professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, said in April.