Herbalife is tapping an ex-Obama administration honcho to beat back hedge fund nemesis Bill Ackman, who upped the stakes this week when he called the nutritional supplements company a “criminal enterprise.”
As part of the knock-down, drag-out battle between the two sides, Herbalife, which is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission among others, is hiring Vice President Joe Biden’s former chief of staff, Alan Hoffman, to fend off regulators, The Post has learned.
Hoffman left the White House in 2012 to head up lobbying at PepsiCo.
“He is being brought in to fight back against Bill Ackman’s multi-front efforts — both here on Capitol Hill, with federal regulators, and now state AGs all across the states,” said a Washington insider.
The insider pointed to Hoffman’s long relationship with FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeney, one of three Democrats on the five-person commission, as key to Hoffman’s hiring.
McSweeney was Hoffman’s deputy when he was Biden’s chief of staff in the Senate. She also worked under Hoffman for the vice president in the White House.
In March, the FTC acknowledged a formal probe of Herbalife after Ackman lobbied regulators and lawmakers to investigate his claims that the company is a pyramid scheme. Ackman has placed a $1 billion bet that the company’s stock will collapse.
That put Herbalife, which vehemently denies the accusation, on the defensive.
It has spent tens of millions of dollars on legal fees and sent distributors to Washington to plead with their representatives in Congress.
Lobbying hit $630,000 during the first quarter — mostly before the FTC acknowledged its investigation. That’s half of what it spent for the entire year of 2013.
Ackman’s Pershing Square fund has spent $126,000 during the same period.
While the lobbying dollars are smaller, Ackman has spent $50 million over the past two years on research that it has shared with the FTC. In his latest attack on the company Tuesday, Ackman homed in on Herbalife’s nutrition clubs, calling them “entirely fraudulent.”
Herbalife and Hoffman declined to comment.