Cow-powered Panda makes plans to dissolve, liquidate

Dallas-based Panda Ethanol (OTC:PDAE) said today its stockholders have approved dissolution and a plan of liquidation. The ethanol plant developer’s stock transfer books closed yesterday, and the company is delisting from the Pink Sheets.

Panda said it plans to disperse any remaining funds or assets to preferred stockholders, entitled to receive up to $2.5 million, and then to common stockholders. But the company, a former subsidiary of Panda Energy, said it doesn’t think it will have anything left to distribute to common shareholders.

In January, the company's subsidiaries that held and managed its Hereford, Texas-based ethanol refinery filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Neither the company nor its shareholders are expected to receive any proceeds from the sale of the facility.

French financial services giant Société Générale Group acquired Panda Ethanol’s unfinished Hereford plant in April for a $25 million credit bid in bankruptcy court.

In 2007, the startup scrapped plans to raise $140 million in debt (see $140 million for cow-powered ethanol and Ethanol maker Panda scraps notes).

The company intended to use proceeds to provide equity funding for the development and construction of an ethanol facility in Yuma, Colo. But the timing was bad. In the three-week period leading up to deal pricing, some publicly traded ethanol stocks lost more than 20 percent of their market value.