• Settlement negotiations restarted under court of first instance
  • Chairman of the Supervisory Board Pflaumer "We welcome a court-moderated settlement and we will hold to the gentlemen's agreement"

Erlangen, 12 September 2011 Dr Werner Meyer, presiding judge of the second chamber of the District Court of Nuremberg-Fürth, sitting in commercial affairs, proposed last Friday that the settlement negotiations be restarted in order to resolve the dispute between Solar Millennium AG (ISIN DE0007218406) and the former Chairman of the Executive Board, Prof. Utz Claassen.

The court granted the parties a deadline until the end of November 2011 to reach a settlement. The court itself will preside over the negotiations. "The top priority is to find an acceptable solution for the company and its shareholders. We would very glad if this could be done through a settlement moderated by the court," stated Helmut Pflaumer, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Solar Millennium AG. "We will now do our part to make a settlement possible. It is due to our decency and respect for the court that we are willing to hold to the any gentlemen's agreement found and put the dispute aside for the duration of the settlement talks."

In the negotiations cannot reach a settlement by the end of November, the court has raised the prospect of a negotiation deadline in March or April 2012. In Pflaumer's words, "If, against all expectations, the settlement talks are ineffective, we'll pursue the claims of the company and its shareholders in court. Nonetheless, we have no doubt we'll find a friendly solution, because that would spare everyone, especially Solar Millennium and its employees, a tug of war which could take years."

About Solar Millennium AG:

Solar Millennium AG (ISIN DE0007218406), Erlangen, is a company that operates globally in the renewable energy sector, with its main focus on solar power plants. Together with its subsidiaries and associates, the Company specializes in solar-thermal power plants, particularly parabolic trough plants, and has taken a global leadership position in this field.

Solar Millennium is striving to further extend its expertise in this area with the aim of achieving and securing sustainable technology leadership. The Company covers all important business sectors along the value chain for solar power plants: from project development and financing to technology and the turnkey construction and operation of power plants. Solar Millennium realized Europe’s first parabolic trough power plants in Spain as well as the first modern parabolic trough solar field in Egypt. In Blythe (California), Solar Millennium is presently developing the largest solar power plant in the world. Additional projects are planned around the world with a total capacity of several thousand megawatts. The current regional focus is on Spain, the U.S., the Middle East and North Africa.

About solar-thermal power plant technology:

Solar-thermal power plants generate electricity by converting solar radiation into heat energy. In a parabolic trough power plant, trough-shaped mirrors concentrate the incidental radiation onto a pipe in the focal line of the collector. Its absorption heats a fluid heat medium in the pipe, generating steam in the power block through a heat exchanger. As in conventional power plants, the steam powers a turbine to generate electricity. By integrating thermal storage, electricity can be supplied on demand, even after sunset.