JA Solar Chairman Reportedly Detained

Chinese solar panel manufacturing giant JA Solar’s shares have gone south again. Here’s what triggered the latest drop.

Yicai Global is reporting JA Solar Chairman and CEO Jin Baofang has been detained by the supervisory commission of Pingdu city, northeastern Shandong province in China. The local commission is the provincial branch of the National Supervisory Commission. According to Wikipedia, the National Supervisory Commission is the highest anti-corruption agency of the PRC and is at the same administrative ranking as Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate (the public prosecutor’s department).

In addition to his JA Solar role, Jin Baofang is also the Vice President of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association and the director of PV Products Association Branch of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products. He has also been a delegate at several National People’s Congresses, and has received Party recognition in the form of the May 1st Labor Medal and National Labor Model.

There aren’t any further details of the nature of the investigation at this stage, which isn’t unusual in these cases, but JA Solar reportedly says it is not impacting company operations and an internal investigation hasn’t revealed any wrongdoing.

JA Solar’s shares took a hit on the news, dropping the daily exchange-limited 10%, following on from a 10% drop on Friday.

Yicai Global says Jin Baofang holds 57 percent equity in JA Solar. He was ranked 113rd on the Forbes China Rich List as at the 4th of November, with a net worth of USD $4.39B at that point.

JA Solar A Major PV Player

JA Solar is a member of the Silicon Module Super League (SMSL), a group of six major solar panel producers that also includes Canadian Solar, Hanwha Q CELLS, Jinko Solar, Trina Solar and Longi. The company was founded by Jin Baofang in 2005 and cumulative shipments to the end of the second quarter of this year had eclipsed 50GW.

GlobalData’s top ten list of panel manufacturers for global shipments in 2019 ranked JA Solar at no. 2, with 10.3GW (+17% on 2018). The firm is targeting 16GW of module shipments in 2020.

Recently the company started ramping up production at its 10GW Yiwu Information Optoelectronic High-tech Industrial Park manufacturing hub. According to PV-Tech, JA Solar has plans to reach 18GW ingot/wafer capacity, 16GW of cell capacity and 23GW of module assembly capacity by the end of 2020.

JA Solar listed on the NASDAQ in 2007. It ceased to be a publicly traded company in 2018 after completion of its merger with JASO Acquisition Limited, but didn’t remain a private company for long. Early this year the company announced it had listed its common stock on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

The firm entered the Australian market in 2013 and its panels have proved to be pretty popular in Australia given their reliability and comparatively low pricing point. JA Solar panel reviews here on SolarQuotes are generally quite favourable and the company is currently listed by SQ as a trusted brand.