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Herbalife Ltd. engages in the provision of health and wellness products. It operates through the following geographical segments: North America, Latin America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, and China. The company was founded by Mark Reynolds Hughes in February 1980 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.
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“‘Icahn’s favorite Wall Street saying: “If you want a friend, get a dog.” Over his storied career, Icahn has made many enemies. I don’t know that he has any real friends. He could use one here.’”
That was billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, resurrecting his longstanding feud with billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn in a tweet Wednesday.
Ackman was referencing the fallout from the recent report by short-selling firm Hindenburg Research that accused Icahn’s publicly traded investment vehicle, Icahn Enterprise Partners LP
IEP,
of inflating asset values and causing his company to trade at a large premium. The report from May 2 has cost IEP about $10.9 billion in lost market cap, after the stock tumbled another 21% on Thursday.
Ackman said he is neither long or short IEP but merely “watching from a distance.”
But he seemed to agree with Hindenburg’s founder and CEO, Nate Anderson, who questioned margin loans extended to Icahn using his roughly 85% stake in IEP as collateral. Icahn has not disclosed the terms of those loans although he recently told the Financial Times that he used the money to make additional investments outside of his publicly traded vehicle.
“Over the years I have made a great deal of money with money,” he was quoted as having said. “I like to have a war chest, and doing that gave me more of a war chest.”
Ackman said the margin lender or lenders “must be extremely concerned with the situation,” particularly after IEP has disclosed a federal investigation of its business and corporate governance.
For his part, Icahn has called Hindenburg’s analysis “misleading and self-serving” and said it was designed solely to hurt long-term IEP shareholders.
Ackman compared the situation to that of failed investment fund Archegos, “where the swap counterparties were comforted by each having relatively smaller exposures to the situation.”
“The problem is that multiple lenders make for a more chaotic situation. All it takes is for one lender to break ranks and liquidate shares or attempt to hedge, before the house comes falling down. Here, the patsy is the last lender to liquidate.”
Ackman also expressed his surprise that Icahn has not disclosed the margin-loan terms, or even said who provided them. “My understanding of 13D SEC rules is that they require disclosure of sources of financing and even copies of financing agreements, although many investors ignore these requirements.”
Ackman also questioned how IEP’s large dividend yield is feasible, as it’s not supported by operating cash flows.
“The yield is generated by returning capital to outside shareholders, which is in turn funded by the company selling stock to investors,” said Ackman.
Icahn’s problem now is that his system has been outed by the short seller, Ackman wrote.
“Transparency is not the friend of $IEP having caused a more than 50% decline in the shares, which has caused Icahn to post more shares, now more than 65% of his holdings,” he said in the tweet.
The bad blood between Icahn and Ackman goes back to a business dispute the two had over a 2003 deal involving Hallwood Realty. The litigation between them went on for years.
But their animosity for one another hit a crescendo in 2013, when Bill Ackman publicly waged a $1 billion short-selling campaign against Herbalife. Sensing weakness, Icahn took a long position in Herbalife’s stock
HLF,
and helped deal Ackman significant losses on his bet over time.
The two claimed they had made up in 2014, sharing a stage at a conference broadcast by CNBC.
Ackman had previously had taken a soft shot at Icahn over the Hindenburg report, saying there was a “karmic quality” to it. But now their battle of Wall Street titans appears to be back in full force.
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ON THE FRONTLINE IN DONETSK REGION, Ukraine, May 4 (Reuters) – After months of living in trenches and bunkers near Ukraine’s southeastern frontlines, Artem and his fellow soldiers have lost the fear they once felt.
The war ebbs and flows for the 30-year-old volunteer from a small town near Chernihiv, in the north of the country, that came under siege early on in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago and was briefly occupied.
Despite the regular thud of artillery and the whirring of a helicopter overhead, things have been relatively quiet of late for the unit located close to Russian positions.
The soldiers spend much of their time peering through binoculars, waiting, listening, scrolling through smartphones, clearing away mud and checking their weapons – including machine guns provided by the United States and Germany.
The last Russian attack was about a month ago, when some 30 Russian troops were mown down by two machine guns, said the group’s commander, Dmytro. Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield reports.
“There is always danger here, but over time you get used to it, and all your senses seem to sharpen,” Artem told Reuters during a recent reporting trip to the position.
“You no longer feel the fear that you had at the beginning,” added Artem, who has been based in the eastern Donbas region for some six months. He and his comrades, mostly volunteers, rotate regularly through the trenches, four days on, four days off.
They share their position with a cat and her seven kittens, who help to keep the mouse population down.
[1/5] A Ukrainian service member Oleksandr, 44, is seen in a trench at a frontline, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine April 28, 2023. REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova
The narrow trenches are cut deep into black earth, reinforced in places by sandbags.
Dugouts are cramped but provide shelter from artillery shelling, mortars and weapons dropped from drones – munitions that pose a threat to both sides along around 1,200 km (750 miles) of frontlines in eastern and southern Ukraine.
“We have a place to eat, to sleep, we have a roof over our head. I don’t think we need much more here, once you have the necessities covered,” said Artem, who gave only his first name for security reasons.
“You can sleep, you can eat, and you find yourself in an illusion of safety. Nothing else matters.”
He joined up to fight the Russians soon after the invasion began, motivated by patriotism and a desire to protect his parents, friends and girlfriend.
“Over time, when you understand that they are all safe, it just becomes a job.”
He has not been home for some time, preferring to wait for the conflict to end so that he will not be sent back to the trenches when his leave ends.
Ukrainian authorities are planning to launch a major counteroffensive in the coming weeks which they hope will shift the momentum in the war and push the Russians back towards the borders of 1991.
Until then, Artem and his comrades wait and prepare for the next skirmish.
Editing by Nick Macfie
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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LAKE SILS, Switzerland, March 14 (Reuters) – David Vencl emerged from the depths of Switzerland’s Lake Sils on Tuesday after a record dive beneath the ice to a depth of more than 50 meters without a wetsuit.
The 40-year-old Czech diver’s record vertical plunge to 52.1 meters in a single breath follows his entry into the Guinness World Records book for swimming the length of a frozen Czech lake in 2021.
Vencl dived through a hole in the ice then retrieved a sticker from a depth of 50 meters to prove his feat before re-emerging through the same hole. He spat some blood, sat down for a minute and then opened a bottle of champagne. A later visit to the hospital confirmed there was nothing serious.
[1/3] Czech freediver David Vencl dives to 52 metres under the ice of Lake Sils in one breath and wearing only a swimsuit in this picture taken from a video in Sils near St. Moritz, Switzerland March 14, 2023. David Vencl Organisation/Handout via REUTERS
The Swiss plunge in temperatures of between 1 and 4 degrees Celsius took him 1 minute 54 seconds, his promoter Pavel Kalous said, which was a bit slower than expected.
“He kind of enjoyed it but he admits he was a little more nervous than usual and he had some problems with breathing,” he told Reuters.
“There is nothing difficult for him to be in cold water… Lack of oxygen is something normal for him. But this was completely different because it’s really difficult to work with the pressure in your ears in cold water,” he added.
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“If you combine all these three things: cold water, lack of oxygen and the problem with working with pressure, it’s something very unique,” he added.
Reporting by Denis Balibouse in Lake Sils, Switzerland
Writing by Emma Farge
Editing by Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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MATAMOROS, Mexico, Dec 24 (Reuters) – Hundreds of migrants prepared to camp in the cold at Mexico’s northern border over Christmas, hoping for a swift reversal in U.S. migration restrictions as they endure the bite of a winter storm ravaging the United States.
After the U.S. Supreme Court this week ruled that restrictions known as Title 42 could stay in place temporarily, many migrants are facing a Christmas weekend of what Mexico’s weather service called a “mass of arctic air.”
“I’m staying here, where else can I go?” said Walmix Juin, a 32-year-old Haitian migrant preparing for the weekend in a flimsy tent in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. “I never thought I would spend a Christmas like this.”
Temperatures in the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa, where several thousand people are camping outside or in bare-bones shelters, are expected to hover around freezing on Saturday and only slightly improve on Sunday.
Further west in Ciudad Juarez, where hundreds of migrants have been lining up to seek asylum at the border with El Paso, Texas, temperatures are forecast to drop to minus six degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit). Many have been sleeping in the streets.
Officials have provided more space in shelters in recent days, but some migrants are wary.
[1/4] Migrants, mostly from Venezuela, take refuge from the cold on a public transport bus during a night of low temperatures, while another migrant with his son watches them from outside, in downtown El Paso, Texas, U.S., December 23, 2022. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
Wearing a baseball hat and jacket zipped to the chin, 29-year-old Venezuelan Antony Rodriguez has tried to stay warm in Matamoros by huddling under blankets in a tent with five relatives, he showed in a video shared with Reuters.
After an arduous trek across Central America and Mexico, Rodriguez said he turned down the offer of a shelter because he feared authorities would bus them south.
“We feel they’ll send us back,” he said.
Another Venezuelan in Matamoros, Giovanny Castellanos, said he was camping out in a tent on the border, wrapped up in blankets, to keep abreast of developments.
“If you go to shelter you’re further from here where the real information is,” the 32-year-old said.
Title 42 allows the United States to return migrants to Mexico or certain countries without a chance to request asylum. It had been due to end on Dec. 21 before the court ruling. Without clarity on when it will finish, some officials worry their cities could be overwhelmed if more migrants turn up.
“U.S. migration policy has a big impact here on the border,” Reynosa Mayor Carlos Pena Ortiz said on Friday.
Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Daniel Becerril; Additional reporting by Jackie Botts, Jose Luis Gonzalez and Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Leslie Adler
Editing by Dave Graham
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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