
One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015) - lawrenceyan
http://fortune.com/2015/09/09/the-siege-of-herbalife/
======
Overtonwindow
I use to work in legislative affairs for the natural health industry. It's all
one big scam. I try to explain it like this:

Company A sells natural remedies, etc. Company B is a news organization which
reports on natural health remedies, and also advertises for those companies,
et. Nonprofit C is a consumer watchdog organization that investigates and
promotes natural health. They are supported by the natural health industry,
and community. Trade Association D is a group of natural health corporations
that lobby the government, and fight bad press.

The trick is, A, B, C, and D are all working together, in collusion, with the
same investors, same backers, and each supports the other. It's so pervasive
it's astounding, and extremely difficult for consumers to see through to
factual information.

~~~
gnu8
Seems like a sure thing to short the piss out of an enterprise like this and
wage a comprehensive campaign of activism and consumer education against it.
With rationality on your side, how could you lose?

~~~
dragonwriter
> With rationality on your side, how could you lose?

You could lose because the rational choice model does not accurately model
human behavior in the real world; people don't act based on perfect
information, in part because even when presented with correct information,
they are likely to reject it if it doesn't fit their pre-existing world view.

~~~
mbgilliland
That has very little to do with the rational choice model. Rational choice
agrees that people don't act on perfect information. It also agrees that even
when given good information, individuals don't necessarily believe it. All RCT
really boils down to is the fairly uncontroversial statement that people act
in accordance with their actual preferences (even if their preferences should
be different, the actions are not well-calculated to achieve their goals, or
they say they have different preferences).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Rational choice agrees that people don't act on perfect information

No, full rational choice theory posits that people do behave in a way which
maximizes actual (not expected) net utility, or, in more detail, as if:

(1) They have a coherent “utility function” mapping each potential path
through time that might be taken to a unidimensional, real-number utility
value.

(2) They have perfect knowledge of the outcome (path through time), or at
least resulting utility value, produced by every possible option with every
decision they make,

(3) They consistently choose the option that maximizes utility.

There are more limited _modifications_ of rational choice theory that attempt,
with varying degrees of success, to close the predictive gap between full
rational choice theory and actual behavior resulting from the fact that humans
_do not_ behave “rationally” in the sense of rational choice theory, but they
aren't what is involved with the question “how can you lose when rationality
is on your side?” asked upthread.

------
exogeny
I don't really get the Herbalife defense in here.

Here's what I know: The products are of dubious quality, and can be bought for
much cheaper elsewhere. The majority of people who end up being distributors
absorb a net loss, and given that many already come from financially unstable
backgrounds, that loss is particularly painful. The largest sellers in the
chain either got in super early, or make more money off of ancillary products
(seminars, etc.) than actual sales.

That sounds shady as hell as best, downright predatory at worst, and all of
the "Yeah, it might be bad, but so is X" arguments in the world don't absolve
it.

I guess where the real decision fork is to what extent you feel the Government
is responsible for making it harder for people to make dumb decisions by
shutting down the companies that prey upon them.

~~~
lathiat
People also tend to lean heavily on their personal social network, which often
alienates them from their personal friend base. And has limited supply before
the success you do get from that runs out.

~~~
pavel_lishin
And don't forget that you're often not the first one in your network to start
peddling this garbage.

My parents did it for awhile, after being turned onto it by another woman in
the small town we lived in. But guess what? That same woman was already
selling to 90% of our potential customers. Everyone who was going to buy a
case of Glister toothpaste already had one sitting in their garage; who were
we supposed to sell to?

The answer to the rhetorical question is, nobody. We brushed our teeth with
our shitty investment for about a year, then wrote the whole thing off as a
failed experiment that luckily didn't bankrupt us.

------
Top19
All MLMs are scams. I hate using the term pyramid schemes, because if you use
that term all of the MLM apologists will start cranking out very long-winded
philosophical definitions of pyramid schemes that obscure the true point.

The MLM "model" can be summarized thusly:

\- 1. Give people pretty good business advice from a host of good business
books

\- 2. Give people a very positive exciting environment

\- 3. Give people literally the WORST job ever created with a product that
cannot exist on its own in the marketplace if it wasn't being artificially
propped up by hundreds of thousands of distributors

MLMs are scams. And no matter how much they try to attack other industries by
saying how unethical they are, or how much they lie about their products, that
can never and will never absolve them for the damage they have done to so many
lives.

ALSO: something else you'll notice is that people who've been involved with
MLMs might recall them fondly. This is just a defense mechanism (an extremely
understandable one) to prevent having to view oneself as being duped. I think
it's a shame though because we'll all be duped or scammed to some degree in
our life, no need to change the past. Anyway reading "The Big Con" by David
Maurer right now, a book by a sociologist about con-men in the 1940s. It's the
basis for the movie "The Sting", and its remarkable how many people in the
book are conned but refuse to believe it, and even years later still think
their guy is out there, about to return their money at any time with 20x the
profit or whatever.

EDIT: Also it is nearly impossible to look this stuff up on Google. MLM people
have so carpet bombed the search sites the first 30 or so links will be links
to Youtube videos with titles like "Is XYZ company a scam??" that find of
course it's not. Occasionally a random legitimate news article will leak
through. Otherwise they've literally walled the world off from anti-MLM
information.

~~~
sharemywin
To me you're kind of misusing the term scam. To me it's no more of a scam than
buying a stock at the wrong time or working for a startup with options or any
affiliate program. A lot of the time the products are really good at first
they're usually hard to sell in retail and then usually the market catches up
at the retail level and the product becomes a commodity. And at the same time
the market saturates with reps and it becomes a bad opportunity.

~~~
opportune
Often with MLMs you have to buy the product yourself first and then sell it.
So people end up buying $1000 worth of energy drinks they can never sell,
because their "employers" fed them so much bullshit about it being easy money.
I would call that a scam

~~~
notfromhere
MLM sell their products at retail prices to their 'distributors' who then have
to mark it up yet again, making the actual distributors the customer base
(since normal consumers won't tolerate that level of markup).

If you're buying wholesale stock at retail prices, you are being scammed.

------
aresant
Hard to beat the hedge fund compensation model of fee on the way up, fee on
the way down.

Agnostic to his Herbalife bet, Ackman "has widely underperformed the S&P 500
since its EOY 2012 inception: 7.1% since inception net of fees vs. 84% for the
S&P 500. Their original flagship fund's (2004 inception) track record is
outstanding with returns of ~20% per annum."

So his first fund killed it, he made a name for himself, raised a ton of
money, and has literally cost his investors 75% of their returns to date in
the market.

He's personally worth $1,400,000,000 now as a result.

Every fund pitch everywhere comes with the disclaimer "Past performance is not
an indicator of future success" because of funds like Ackman's.

~~~
jacquesm
> Every fund pitch everywhere comes with the disclaimer "Past performance is
> not an indicator of future success" because of funds like Ackman's.

No, it's because of the simple fact that you can't predict the future. That
sleazeballs can make it even worse by making funds that pretend that they had
yields before they even existed (or were active only in a theoretical sense
with a few bucks in it as a fig leaf and the other 999 that got axed you'll
never hear about) is taken as a given.

That's just the 1024 envelope trick at a higher level.

~~~
btilly
Indeed.

I believe that the regulation that requires that disclosure comes from the
1933 law establishing the SEC. A specific concern was how advertising past
returns fed into getting people excited about bubbles like the one which
popped in 1929.

Therefore the regulation was meant to address a systemic problem rather than
individual malfeasance.

------
addisonj
I live and work in Utah, which, for not completely clear to me reasons, is
home to a lot of MLMs. Nu Skin, Usana, Xango, doTerra, Young Living, Jamberry
(and those are the ones I can just name off the top of my head) are all
headquartered here.

For an area that in many ways is punching above its weight class in terms of
tech companies, I occasionally have nagging (possibly unfounded?) concerns in
the back of my head that one day a lot of these companies will be a hindrance
on the continued growth here. I know some people already view Utah mostly as
the home of MLMs and I don't know if that does much for attracting forward
looking tech investment. That said, these companies have brought a ton of jobs
and has certainly helped fund the growth in the area and I have worked with
and met a lot of people who seem pretty decent.

While many of these companies aren't "evil", I think the MLM is probably one
of the most insidious dark design patterns around. I think the best way of how
these companies primarily operate is like the Cassette/CD clubs of a few years
past. A small fee gets you a decent amount of "up front value" (Join the club
for $30 and get 30% off your first order!) with the expectation that you won't
order anything else or forget to cancel the yearly membership fee. This is, of
course, all made worse by the fact that is often friends and family who are
peddling the high margin health and dietary products with questionable
efficacy. Like I said, I don't know if I can call it an outright scam (I know
a few people who really like there shakes and supplements and swear by them),
but it does drive strange incentives...

~~~
swimfar
The reason I had heard is because Mormon's make great door-to-door salesmen.
Many of the men have spent a year or two of door-to-door proselyting
(attempting to convert). So they're used to selling to strangers and also
being rejected. I'm not sure how true this is, but it seems plausible.

~~~
jansan
I see a lot of those Mormon young men here in Germany on their mission. There
are usually two of them, dresses well and behaving very politely. Although
they directly contact people on the street, I never have the feeling that
anyone is annoyed by them. Therefore I could well imagine that they are great
sales men.

~~~
swiley
Honestly, being stopped on the street and talked to isn't so bad if they're
not trying to sell you something. The only reason I ever go out is to talk to
people and almost everyone (myself included) is afraid to do it. I've come to
enjoy the short conversations with the Jehovah's witnesses, the Hindus and so
on even though I'll probably never believe most of what they're saying.

------
beavisel
There was a documentary about this on Netflix. Interesting viewing, but it did
feel like a vehicle for parties involved in shorting the stock to get more
momentum.

Link:
[https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80108609](https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80108609)

------
anilshanbhag
John Oliver discussing Herbalife
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6MwGeOm8iI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6MwGeOm8iI)

Bill Ackmann on Herbalife
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQc6L4ieMwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQc6L4ieMwo)

Almost 60% of their distributors were latinos
([http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/15/business/la-fi-
herba...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/15/business/la-fi-herbalife-
latino-20130216)). The lengthy presentation countering Pershing Square's
accusations which contained this fact
([http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-48ZAJ9/229776353...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-48ZAJ9/2297763534x0x627448/e3de3984-4dff-4ca3-90a1-a1c1cafecb4e/Herbalife_Investor_Day_Presentation_-_01.10.13.pdf)).
There are countless stories of how these people were exploited in the name of
gains.

They are expanding rapidly in international markets. In India, Herbalife has
over 40 distribution centers now and over 0.5 million distributors ! They even
got a famous sports personalities to advertise for them
([http://www.herbalproductkart.com/herbalife-brand-
ambassdors](http://www.herbalproductkart.com/herbalife-brand-ambassdors)).

To do my bit in preventing people from falling for such scams, I asked my
friends and mother to share it on their whatsapp groups so that people don't
fall prey to such pyramid schemes.

~~~
ridruejo
You may not like it, but it is not necessarily a scam. Some of the posts by
Bronte capital mentioned in the article

[http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/06/herbalife-very-
lon...](http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/06/herbalife-very-long-
post.html)

[http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2016/07/herbalife-and-
end-...](http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2016/07/herbalife-and-end-of-
world.html)

~~~
eej71
It's unfortunate that you are being downvoted - especially since you are
citing John Hempton's excellent work on the topic. It's really worth a read
and an interesting counterpoint to Ackman's analysis.

~~~
troisx
He's being downvoted because the work is not excellent. Hempton uses Mormon
end-of-the-world hoarding as the legitimate excuse for inventory loading.

~~~
eej71
We must have read it entirely differently.

The second link, which is far briefer, highlights that Hempton has finally
found an example of inventory loading by millennial members of the Mormon
church. But he regards that as an edge case. So I don't read that as making
the point that you seem to be criticizing.

More important though is the first link which is extensive and addresses many
of Ackman's claims and includes Hempton's own front line documentation. None
of that has to do with defending Herbalife on the grounds of "Mormon end of
the world hoarding".

------
justboxing
2017: "Herbalife’s $700 Million Stock Surge Is Another Blow to Bill Ackman" =>
[http://fortune.com/2017/05/05/herbalife-stock-bill-
ackman/](http://fortune.com/2017/05/05/herbalife-stock-bill-ackman/)

Looks like Herbalife is having the last laugh.

------
lathiat
Theres a recent follow-up from fortune on this, worth reading.. according to
the article the stock price has grown back to roughly where it was before
Ackman's campaign. However they're in the middle of a lot of changes in
response to the FTC settlement so material changes in the future are also
possible.

[http://fortune.com/2017/05/05/herbalife-stock-bill-
ackman/](http://fortune.com/2017/05/05/herbalife-stock-bill-ackman/)

------
ufo
Does anyone know if there have been more developments to this story in the two
years since this article was written?

~~~
ringaroundthetx
Herbalife was too rich for the FTC to find it an illegal financial scheme,
subsequently and simultaneously Bill Ackman got squeezed pretty hard on that
and several of his other bets.

He still has a group of followers because he's rich and has a nice pedigree,
but he has fallen from glory pretty hard and his calls don't matter anymore.

One of the best short sells these days is to short everything in his portfolio
when you think he is about to get a margin call. Because that will force him
to liquidate several large positions in different stocks.

~~~
lstyls
Honest question: how the heck do you time a margin call for a whale like that
apart from knowing someone on the inside?

~~~
ringaroundthetx
The fund's holdings are known, and the fund manager's dispositions are easily
inferred by how much they talk about something. ie. How married they are to a
position.

So for example, when Valeant Pharmaceauticals was tanking from its highs of
$220, all the way to $16, after Bill Ackman defended it, doubled down, joined
the board, and bought calls, and then admitted to not having more funds
available. You just short other things in his portfolio, or at least short
them on the expectation that other people are going to short.

Its fun. I do "proxy trades" a lot, where I trade a temporarily correlated
asset, while the market focuses on a different asset.

~~~
lawrenceyan
How was Ackman able to get away with having lost so much money on Valeant?

~~~
ringaroundthetx
"get away"?

His fund didn't go insolvent, many investors did redeem their stake in his
funds when their lockup periods were up, and he has enough interest and clout
to continue?

I'm not sure what you are asking. Its worded like you thought there would be
police or broken kneecaps involved

~~~
lawrenceyan
"Get away" more in the sense as to why people still continue to invest their
capital into his fund after such a massive failure on Ackman's part.

------
blunte
I have built software for a number of MLMs in the past 20 years. I can tear
down a compensation plan and tell you where the money will go and what the
likelihood of success will be for "the little guy" as well as the upper
management reward for the "hitter".

The #1 factor in deciding if an MLM is legit is the product. Many, many MLMs
have products that have no real value to any market, existing only to attempt
to legitimize a money game.

However, MLM is a pretty good marketing approach for products that:

1 - are new or difficult to understand, and where having a human explain or
demonstrate in person helps the potential consumer decide if it's something
for them

2 - depend on customer testimonials to express their effectiveness,
particularly regarding consumables that are not or cannot be judged and
regulated by the FDA or similar body

3 - are consumable, such that the buyers and _consumers_ of the product
naturally evangelize the product, and then get rewards for bringing new
customers

Let's be honest - there are a lot of BS products that are legally marketed
through traditional, accepted, and even respected channels. And there are a
ton of BS products marketing via MLM. The difference is that some MLMs have
lured members with the unrealistic prospect of huge incomes and then guided
the new members to buy a ton of product ("front-loading") so as to ascend more
rapidly to the higher earning potentials. That's how you end up with people
with a garage full of junk they'll never manage to sell.

I don't know if Herbalife does this. I rather doubt it. But really, if a new
employee in a company could choose to pay $25k up front with the promise that
they would be more quickly promoted to higher management levels, I think a lot
of people would do it - even if they had no skills or motivation to work to
earn a promotion. In some MLMs, that option exists.

Regarding compensation, every company that markets products takes some percent
of product sales and directs that toward marketing efforts. What makes MLM
unique is that it directs that marketing money to individuals (presumably
based on the amount of sales they drive). And just as Division Managers of
large companies may receive bonuses based on the success of their divisions,
MLM leaders often receive some compensation based on the sales (success) of
representatives they have personally recruited or who have been recruited by
their recruits.

I could go on, but it's boring now. Point is, MLM isn't inherently evil, just
as capitalism isn't inherently evil. But everywhere, there are some people who
will do anything for a dollar. Some become hedge fund managers, and some
become MLM lead marketers.

------
Illniyar
This raises an interesting notions - can shorting be an effective option for
funding legal/social action against a misbehaving company?

So far there has only been two ways to fund social activism against companies
- donations and feeds on class-action lawsuits.

~~~
yesiamyourdad
Whether or not Ackman is right, his method is what's questionable. Let alone
what seems like insanity to me: he's making a very public short bet against a
company. He's _borrowing_ shares of stock to prove the management is wrong and
publicly announcing that fact. So everybody can pile into the short squeeze,
irrespective of the facts or morality of the situation. This is one reason why
the quote "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
applies. The market is irrational because it's in the participants' short term
interest for it to be irrational.

> Conventional activists like Carl Icahn and Nelson Peltz buy shares and then
> “try to fix the company,” observes one hedge fund investor. Ackman, by
> contrast, is trying to annihilate a company. “I’ve never heard of short-
> selling activism in my life,” this investor says. “Are we comfortable that a
> private individual named Bill can try to put somebody out of business?”

Shorting a company as a method of activism just seems like a terrible strategy
on the face of it. A short is a really risky strategy for investing, for
activism it just seems even worse. If you want to change a company using its
stock, the effective way is to be rich enough to buy enough stock to influence
the board.

------
mschuster91
It's not just Herbalife. There are so many MLMs out there, it's madness. One
former friend is a former friend because he fell victim to some German MLM,
believe it was about a website where you could do conference calls.

Back when I was younger, I was a stagehand at a venue where a huge MLM, also
named in the Fortune article, had thrown a yuuuge party. They rented two
entire conference halls for thousands of people and had a giant stage for a
musical set up, complete with pyrotechnics and everything.

Utter madness, all financed by poor people who were screwed over by their
relatives or close friends...

------
imbusy111
Explain to me how this is not market manipulation and securities fraud?

~~~
harryh
There is nothing fraudulent about shorting a stock, telling people you shorted
the stock, and telling them why you shorted the stock.

(the same goes for going long a stock)

~~~
zaroth
Correct. It becomes decisively illegal if you create fake identities to
similarly spout your nonsense.

------
Chickenosaurus
Does anyone know of any legitimate MLM based companies that sell products that
could probably be successfully sold without MLM?

In other words, can MLM be a useful tool for non-scammy companies?

------
zzleeper
I've got the feeling this thread is full of people that drank the BS koolaid
of herbalife.

They either sell snake oil products, or protein shakes that are 10x cheaper at
Costco.

I've known people desperate enough to start selling that crap (as well as
others-their friends-that have to buy it just due to friendship), so please
stop spreading MLM scams.

~~~
anotherbrownguy
>I've known people desperate enough to start selling that crap (as well as
others-their friends-that have to buy it just due to friendship), so please
stop spreading MLM scams.

They offer 100% buyback for distributors for unopened products and they
stopped lead generation completely 4 years ago. So, their distributors are no
different from what cell phone carriers are to Apple.

>They either sell snake oil products, or protein shakes that are 10x cheaper
at Costco.

Kinda like Apple then?

>I've got the feeling this thread is full of people that drank the BS koolaid
of herbalife.

Or the other way around?

~~~
gehsty
I think the main difference is that there is a chain of people who profit from
selling to their 'downlines', not when a product is sold to an actual
customer.

The analogy to apple is poor. Apple sell a product that the majority of people
like and they are actively trying to sell directly to the customer. They use
networks as it is their only option in many markets and once a phone is sold
to the network it is then sold to the customer, there isn't a series of
transactions with each level profiting of the previous level.

~~~
anotherbrownguy
>I think the main difference is that there is a chain of people who profit
from selling to their 'downlines'

How is it different from 3rd party Apple resellers?

>Apple sell a product that the majority of people like

As does Herbalife.

>they are actively trying to sell directly to the customer

Herbalife lets distributors handle sales, not very different from Apple's
resellers.

>They use networks as it is their only option in many markets and once a phone
is sold to the network it is then sold to the customer, there isn't a series
of transactions with each level profiting of the previous level.

Apple -> Authorised Resellers -> Stores. While this is not Apple's only
channel (because they have their own stores plus online shop), it is one of
them... and there is multiple transactions with each level profiting.

~~~
gehsty
It is different because there is only one level of re sellers, these re
sellers are not the only path to market for the product, and that path to
market when sold through a re seller is pretty clear, ie you know Apple make
the phone, you know Apple have sold it to the carrier and the carrier is now
selling it to you. There are literally multiple layers but the layers are
clear and none shady (with the reseller layer adding value in the form of a
network connection).

Herbalife's model would be Herbalife -> tier 1 -> tier 2 -> ..... -> tier n-1
-> t n, with no real clarity on how many tiers there are.

If Herbalife's product is as good as they claim why not sell it direct to
customers either online or in supermarkets? They sell through 'distrubutors'
because it allows them to make a profit without having to actually sell their
product to a customer, because if they were reliant on direct customer based
sales no one would buy there garbage product, and they wouldn't make a profit.

The litmus test for me for a system like this is if it seems like the best way
to actually make money from something is not to actually sell the product to
consumers but to recruit people into your downlines then its probably some
kind of pyramid scheme. I can't see a single product or market where the best
product would be the most profitable when sold through a MLM network.

~~~
anotherbrownguy
>If Herbalife's product is as good as they claim why not sell it direct to
customers either online or in supermarkets?

For the same reason Apple made iPhone exclusive to a carrier when it launched
for the first time... and for the same reason many phone companies still do it
with their phones.

Apple and these phones companies do it because they make anti-competitive
deals... which have seem some backlash. However, Herbalife doesn't have that
because they provide additional value. Products like fitness supplements are
only good if you use it in an intended way, which is what a lot of these
health clubs try to do. You can buy any other food supplement, but you will
not get the results. People choose Herbalife because it just works.

~~~
gehsty
Apple had to make the iPhone exclusive to the launch network in the US as part
of their negotiations to not have any carrier branding and for Apple to retain
full control of the software. Nothing to do with downlines or shifting
inventory.

Apple would clearly rather you bought the phone directly from them, their
entire philosophy is based on continuous integration, from controlling the
sale of their devices through to producing their own hardware and software,
they are probably the least MLM like consumer electronics company going.

Do you distribute Herbalife products or do you just use them? I'm genuinely
interested as no one I know who's tried them thinks they are superior product,
and anyone I know who's got into anything remotely MLMy has lost money and
regretted it.

~~~
anotherbrownguy
I don't buy Herbalife products for the same reason I don't buy most Apple
products. They are overpriced for what they are and I am capable enough to
make whatever cheaper alternative "just work" for me without additional help
from Herbalife and Apple. But I do understand the value they provide for many
people willing to pay for it and willing to buy everything tech related and
everything supplement related respectively from them.

------
nodesocket
I am torn, on one hand Herbalife does smell of one gigantic pyramid scheme.
Howerver, they have completely revamped the company and structure havent they?
On the other hand, while Ackman is savvy and smart, his activist investor
style rubs me the wrong way. He has unlimited capital, and thus that affords
him the right to manipulate companies for his own gain? I don't like it. Also,
let's not forget... If Herbalife eventually goes out of business, he stands to
make a boatload of money. Ackman is not being altruistic.

~~~
blunte
You do realize that traditional business is a form of pyramid scheme. Your
boss probably gets more compensation than you do. He/she may have subordinate
managers who themselves have subordinate managers who have non-manager
employees.

The CEO makes bonuses based on performance of the company. The division
managers makes bonuses based on their divisions' performance. The lowest
people in the company probably make zero bonuses. And in many companies, the
lowest paid workers were promised good future opportunities for growth in the
company.

For every bad MLM (and there are many), I could probably identify 10 bad
traditional companies.

~~~
wyaeld
Having a hierarchy that gets narrower at the top, with people earning more, is
not what makes something a pyramid scheme.

Having the earnings of the higher tier directly funded by financial
contributions from the lower tiers is.

I lot of MLMs have a particular 'hiding in plain site deception'. The retail
margins on the consumer goods aren't where the bulk of the top tier earnings
are coming from. The conferences, training materials, tapes, courses and a
raft of support systems for the distributors... all produced at very little
cost are the true source. This is where the generous subsidies come from.

------
SirLJ
You got to love Carl Icahn:

ON WHEN ACKMAN CALLED HIM IN 2003:

"I'm telling you he's like a crybaby in the schoolyard. I went to a tough
school in Queens, you know, and they used to beat up the little Jewish boys.
He was like one of the little Jewish boys crying ..."

ON ACKMAN AS A FRIEND:

"He's the quintessential example of 'if you want a friend on Wall Street, get
a dog.'"

ON HAVING DINNER WITH ACKMAN:

"As far as I'm concerned, he wanted to have dinner with me. I couldn't figure
out if he was the most sanctimonious guy I met in my life or just arrogant and
that's Ackman."

ON ACKMAN DONATING ANY HLF PROFITS TO CHARITY:

"He talks about charity. That's complete bullshit!"

ON ACKMAN SAYING ICAHN IS A GOOD INVESTOR:

"I appreciate you, Bill, calling me a 'great investor', but unfortunately I
cannot say the same for you."

 __BONUS: ON WHEN SCOTT WAPNER ASKED HIM IF HE 'S LONG HLF:

"I want to say what I want to say and I'm not going to talk about my Herbalife
position because you want to bully me ... I don't give a damn about what you
want to know. I want to talk about what I want to talk about ... You can say
what the hell you want. I'm going to talk about what Ackman just said about
me, not about Herbalife ... I'll talk about Herbalife when I goddamn want to
... I'm never going on a show with you again, that's for damn sure, OK."

~~~
RodericDay
Carl Icahn is not lovable at all.

~~~
valuearb
Aside from all the examples just given, you mean.

~~~
wavefunction
meh

