Solar cell maker Q-Cells bought by S Korea's Hanwha

Q-Cells, a troubled German maker of solar cells which filed for insolvency in April, announced Sunday it had been bought by the South Korean Hanwha Group. The deal, which must be approved by creditors at a meeting on August 29, will see Hanwha pay around 50 million euros ($63 million) in cash as well as taking over its debt "in the low hundreds of millions", a statement said. The South Korean group will take over the Q-Cells' subsidiary in Malaysia and its German research and production site in Thalheim, keeping on about three quarters of its workforce there, it said. Q-Cells had been the leading German maker of solar cells but announced in April it would file for insolvency as it no longer saw any secure financial basis for a continuation of its business. The company, which employed a workforce of more than 2,000, had been in dire financial straits amid a series of corporate failures in the solar power sector in Germany recently.