Here's a very well written and interesting article from Vanity Fair on the Feud:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/04/bill-ackman-dan-loeb-herbalife
In 1984, when he was a junior at Horace Greeley High School, in affluent Chappaqua, New York, he wagered his father $2,000 that he would score a perfect 800 on the verbal section of the S.A.T. The gamble was everything Ackman had saved up from his Bar Mitzvah gift money and his allowance for doing household chores. âI was a little bit of a cocky kid,â he admits, with uncharacteristic understatement.
Tall, athletic, handsome with cerulean eyes, he was the kind of hyper-ambitious kid other kids loved to hate and just the type to make a big wager with no margin for error. But on the night before the S.A.T., his father took pity on him and canceled the bet. âI wouldâve lost it,â Ackman concedes. He got a 780 on the verbal and a 750 on the math. âOne wrong on the verbal, three wrong on the math,â he muses. âIâm still convinced some of the questions were wrong.â
Not much has changed in the nearly 28 years since Ackman graduated from high school, except that his hair has gone prematurely silver. He still has an uncanny knack for making bold, brash pronouncements and for pissing people off. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the current, hugely public fight he and his $12 billion hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital, are waging over the Los Angelesâbased company Herbalife Ltd., which sells weight-loss products and nutritional supplements using a network of independent distributors. Like Amway, Tupperware, and Avon, Herbalife is known as âa multi-level marketer,â or MLM, with no retail stores. Instead, it ships its products to outlets in 88 countries, and the centers recruit salespeople, who buy the product and then try to resell it for a profit to friends and acquaintances.
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/04/bill-ackman-dan-loeb-herbalife
<i> On February 22, 2012, the Indago Girls finished their 100-page report describing how Herbalife had billions in revenues and millions of independent distributors globally (3.2 million at last count, according to CNBC), and claimed to have created millions of jobs in its 33-year existence. But, the Girls summarized, âit would be an impressive American success story if it were not based on a lie. Far from being a shining example of corporate beneficence, Herbalife is a story of stunning deception. It is a pyramid scheme whose revenue comes not from retail sales of its products, as it contends, but from capital lost by failed investors in its business opportunity. Our research has shown that through manipulation and misrepresentation, Herbalife conceals its true business model from distributors and from the investing public. Herbalife is not selling a âhealthy lifestyleâ through nutritional supplements and weight management products; it is selling a highly risky financial product: an investment in the business opportunity of recruiting more Herbalife distributors. The merchandise is little more than a vehicle for selling the financial investment in the pyramid scheme.â </i>
