The Wall Street Journal - who broke the story say:
[the investigators are] looking into whether people, including some hired by Mr. Ackman, made false statements about Herbalife’s business model to regulators and others in order to spur investigations into the company and lower its stock price.
There is a presupposition here - which is that the Feds believe that the story told regulators is false.
No more comment is required.
John
Since our initial presentation on Herbalife, Herbalife has been petitioning the government to investigate Pershing Square in connection with our short position in the company. We are not aware of any statements that we have made that are untrue, nor are we aware of any unlawful conduct on our part or by any consultants that we have hired.
ReplyDeleteAccording to press reports, the government’s inquiry concerns “market manipulation.” According to the SEC:
Manipulation is intentional conduct designed to deceive investors by controlling or artificially affecting the market for a security. Manipulation can involve a number of techniques to affect the supply of, or demand for, a stock. They include: spreading false or misleading information about a company; improperly limiting the number of publicly-available shares; or rigging quotes, prices or trades to create a false or deceptive picture of the demand for a security.
(http://www.sec.gov/answers/tmanipul.htm.)
At no time have I or Pershing Square intentionally made any false or misleading statements about Herbalife. We have publicly issued numerous presentations, white papers and analyses, which are available on the www.factsaboutherbalife.com and www.herbalifepyramidscheme.com websites. Video and audio recordings of our public presentations are available on these websites for anyone including the government to review, and we have encouraged regulators to do so. We have also voluntarily provided additional information about Herbalife to various U.S. authorities.
It is Pershing Square’s long-standing policy to cooperate fully with any requests from any government agency for documents or for interviews.
According to press reports and Herbalife’s own SEC filings, the company is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice, FBI, SEC, and Federal Trade Commission. According to its SEC filings, Herbalife has spent more than $15 million in the last three quarters since the FTC launched its investigation in responding to their requests and an additional $54 million responding to our criticisms of Herbalife’s business and in lobbying the government in an attempt to avoid being investigated. We look forward to the conclusions of the government’s investigations into Herbalife."
~Bill Ackman
Ackman has played fast and free with the facts from the beginning. Walking the fine line of legal and illegal. The same line he has called into question pertaining to Herbalife.
ReplyDeleteRubbish John. Ackman spoke to the media Friday morning. The story has no legs.
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect - that is not necessarily what the Feds believe. They suspect it might be false. If they knew it for a fact then there wouldn't be anything to "look into" - would there?
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