On the other side, Friends of Prokon, representing 10,000 investors - one of eight investors' groups - joined up with social-enterprise bank GLS and renewable electricity retailer Naturstrom AG to lobby for the cooperative option.Р”Р„uditors had estimated the value of the cooperative at 660 million euros - more than the payout offered by EnBW - but if investors chose the cooperative option, they would retain all the risks of ownership as well as its prospective benefits. EnBW did its best to persuade investors to take their cash and walk away.

They chose to become ownersР”В¬orporate subsidiary or citizen-held cooperative? He didn't take sides on which option creditors should vote for.Р”В¬reditors had a clear choice: Sell Prokon to a major power corporation for cash-in-hand, or take ownership of the company. 'Either path would bring Prokon into a stable future,' Penzlin said. But it would also have given them cash-in-hand. The investors, who had purchased a form of dividend rights rather than ownership shares, had paid in about 1.4 billion euros - so a sale to EnBW would have involved accepting a substantial loss. Penzlin presented the investors with a choice: Turn the company into a cooperative owned by its investors and creditors, accepting all the risks and benefits of ownership - or sell it to EnBW, Germany's third-largest electricity company for 550 million euros ($610 million). The company had been handled by Dietmar Penzlin, a lawyer specialized in managing firms through an insolvency process, since it registered for bankruptcy a year and a half ago. 2,000 people representing about 75,000 investors showed up in Hamburg on Thursday for a special creditors' vote to decide the future of Prokon, a wind farm developer founded in 1995 by controversial entrepreneur Carsten Rodbertus and two partners.Р”В¬ritics say it was mismanaged into insolvency.