Billionaire activist Bill Ackman — who has been lambasting Herbalife as a fraud for more than a year — will next month unveil “evidence,” he claims, showing “the company is operating in violation of Chinese law.”
“Herbalife’s business in China operates much like the company’s business in the rest of the world — as a pyramid scheme,” Ackman’s Pershing Square said Friday in a statement.
Ackman, who took a $1 billion short against the Los Angeles company in December 2012, will present his evidence in a Webcast at 2 p.m. on March 11.
Herbalife, a distributor of weight loss shakes and nutritional supplements, vehemently denies that it operates a pyramid scheme.
News that Ackman would soon make a presentation on Herbalife’s Chinese operation was first reported by The Post on Jan. 17.
The presentation comes after Herbalife and Nu Skin, another multi-level marketing company with a big presence in China, tumbled Jan. 16 on a newspaper report calling Nu Skin a pyramid scheme. The report led the Chinese government to investigate Nu Skin.
Unrelated prior reports in the Chinese media claim Herbalife operates as a pyramid there, The Post reported Jan. 24.
Chinese laws are much stricter than those in the US, as they outlaw all multi-level marketing as a pyramid. On Feb. 19, Chinese regulators said they will soon tighten the rules to avoid potential abuses.
Herbalife and Nu Skin have both said they operate in compliance with the Chinese rules.
Ackman’s short on Herbalife has since grown to $1.16 billion.
Shares of Herbalife slipped 0.4 percent on Friday to $66.74.