On resignation and reinvention

In a bid to outrun the North American east coast's freezing rain, your caped cleantechista leaped to the frigid pre-dawn skies early this Friday morning and zoomed west at flank speed, seeking the sun and warmth of my secret California aerie.

Ah! There's nothing like speeding over treetops at low altitude, your swirling super-wake rustling the empty branches of middle America's indigenous deciduous.

So it was with surprise, and no small amount of irony, that events of the day brought conifers into my laser gaze, specifically in the form of a certain solar company.

Penny for your thoughts

Two days ago Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq: ESLR) of Marlboro, Mass. released its 4th quarter earnings. Yes, earnings!

Contrary to Wall Street expectations of a 4 cent loss per share, each Evergreen share earned a penny. The news caused shares to rise some.

Today, an SEC filing gave notice that Evergreen director Gerald Wilson has resigned from the company, citing "frustration with the unproductive nature of his relationship with Rick Feldt, the company's chairman and chief executive officer."

According to the document, on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008, the head of the company's corporate governance committee sent Wilson an email expressing appreciation for Wilson's contributions, but advised that, on considerations of board chemistry, Wilson withdraw from consideration for nomination for re-election at the company's upcoming annual meeting.

Wilson promptly tendered his resignation, according to the filing.

The company received Wilson’s resignation by email on January 30th. He'd been a director of Evergreen since July, 2005.

Wilson is currently a professor at MIT. He did not return requests for comment, but the SEC filing—which claims to have been reviewed and approved by Wilson—speculated about disagreements "with Mr. Feldt's operating style, in particular as it relates to the manner in which communications between management and the board are handled."

Evergreen's shares closed the day essentially flat.

Be Like Mike

Zooming past sunny but cold San Francisco, heading to parts warmer, I suddenly hear a mysterious voice (superheros get voices in our heads all the time—comes with the gig) encouraging me to be more like Mike.

Could the voice mean, like this?

Or, maybe, like this?

Nope. Wrong Mike. We're talking about this Mike.

“Michael Sauvante is somebody you may not have heard of yet but very soon you’ll be hearing about him a lot more.”

So begins the lead-in audio teaser offering wannabe entrepreneurs the chance to receive “one of the best chapters” in Sauvante’s book, 33 pages, for free.

But regular readers here may already recognize the name Michael Sauvante from Noose tightening in bankruptcy investigation or, perhaps Company failures not fraud, says principal.

As these articles document, bankruptcy court has heard a litany of worrisome claims about Sauvante and his associates and their various companies which, the bankruptcy trustee alleges, raised millions but never produced anything material to show for it.

Investors claimed that as much as $8 million disappeared.

According to Judge J. Craig Whitley in an order handed down September 12th, 2007, "in actuality, Seertech and its predecessor entities were non-operational shell companies, created by their principals in succession to bilk investors ... in short, based upon the extensive testimony taken to date in this bankruptcy case, the Seertech entities were 'scams.'"

Sauvante’s new Internet company describes the 30-year-plus veteran in the following manner:

“During that time he raised millions of investor dollars, been worth millions and have even lost it all (valuable experience).”

Valuable, indeed.

Caveat emptor.

As always, if you've got cleantech sector gossip, rumor or word of sordid goings-on, do tell. Save me from my night job.