[3] With offices or production facilities in every major market, Suntech has delivered more than 13,000,000 solar panels to thousands of companies in more than 80 countries around the world.

[4] As the center for the company's global operations, Suntech headquarters, in Wuxi, China, features the world's largest building integrated solar facade.

[5] Suntech's fortunes have declined significantly since its peak in 2008, due to a glut in the market for solar products and problems with its investments.

[12][13] At UNSW, Dr. Shi studied under Professor Martin Green[14]: 143  and met Stuart Wenham, later to be Suntech's Chief Technology Officer.

Suntech targets to ship over 2 GW in 2011; however, free price fall for solar components in 2011 made this more difficult to achieve.

Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Mary John commented on the recognition, "The company's pioneering success in developing energy-efficient, cost-effective and customizable building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems and crystalline PV cells, and modules for solar energy conversion into electricity are highly commendable.

"[22] The Andalay AC Solar PV Panel was awarded one on MSN's most brilliant products of 2009 because of innovations that advanced their ease of installation and use.

[14]: 144 At the time of that offering, Suntech was funded by a consortium of private equity firms, including Actis Capital and Goldman Sachs.

[14]: 144  Academic Lan Xiaohuan writes that Shi's wealth following the listing "acted as a strong demonstration effect and local governments across China soon began to invest in the solar industry.

There was no issue related with transparency and GSF was wrongly blamed for failure of Suntech (evident from Earnings call, Chairman comments[27]).

The reason given for the closure was the hefty tariffs imposed on Chinese solar cells by the United States International Trade Commission.