It may be the deciding round in one of the most bitterly fought battles on Wall Street. On Friday, the Federal Trade Commission announced it reached a settlement with Herbalife, the multilevel marketer of nutrition shakes and supplements and the target of a three-and-half-year campaign by activist investor William Ackman to prove it is a pyramid scheme. Herbalife has agreed to pay $200 million and to implement a series of restructuring moves that amount to a drastic overhaul of its current business model, but it avoided being labeled a pyramid scheme by the regulator.
The settlement appears to be yet another setback for Ackman, whose潘兴广场资本管理在对针对康目产的短暂赌注中脱颖而出了它的声誉和10亿美元。Ackman坚持认为，Herbalife是一个pyramid schemethat makes its money from recruiting distributors, who ultimately lose money, than it does selling products and that regulators would eventually shut it down. Ackman lobbied for the FTC to investigate the company, declaring that Herbalife shares would one day go to zero.
相反，投资者将本公司股份在周五上午日期上市的股票上午近12％，这是公司未被视为金字塔计划的消息。（股票收于65.25美元，比上一天关闭的近10％近10％。）Pershing Square的旗舰基金今年已经下降了大约20％，之后去年的增加了20％。
On the other hand, the FTC didn’t exactly give Herbalife the all-clear. In itscomplaint那the FTC alleged that Herbalife deceived its distributors into thinking they could make money strictly by hawking its wares, when in fact the only real way to make money was by recruiting new distributors into the company to buy inventory. Under the terms of the settlement, Herbalife has agreed to change how distributors are compensated so that it rewards retail sales to end customers, to implement a new compensation structure that will be based on product sales to customers and not distributors themselves, and to pay for a compliance auditor who will monitor Herbalife’s adherence to the provisions of the deal for the next seven years. This essentially means that going forward, the company will have to make most of its money selling shakes and vitamins and not by recruiting new members to buy inventory.
“这一解决方案将要求康宝莱从根本上重组其业务，以便参与者为他们销售的东西获得奖励，而不是他们招募的人，”FTC主席Edith Ramirez在宣布结算的声明中表示。“Herbalife将不得不合法地开始运作，只有真实的索赔，其成员可能会有多少钱，并且必须弥补消费者因我们收取的不公平和欺骗而遭受的损失。实践。“
In the statement, the FTC says Herbalife currently promises potential distributors they will make so much money they will be able to quit their jobs and can pull in thousands of dollars a month, but in reality most of them end up making little or no money.
For example, the FTC said in its complaint that more than half of Herbalife’s distributors made an average of just $300 for 2014. And according to Herbalife’s own survey, distributors who operate its Nutrition Clubs spent an average of $8,500 to open the clubs, and fully 57 percent either made no money or lost money. The FTC said that the few distributors who do make money do so from recruiting new distributors, regardless of whether those new members can sell the inventory they have to buy.
“发现自己无法赚钱......米尔巴里费分销商放弃了大量的康宝莱，”陈述说。“其中大多数人在第一年内停止订购产品，并在任何给定年内辞去的整个Herbalife经销商基地的一半。”This was the crux of Ackman’s high-profile and hard-hitting campaign, which began in December 2012 with a three-hour presentation and which has been the subject of a televised spat on CNBC with Herbalife investor Carl Icahn, a documentary premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, and a slew of slickly-produced videos detailing Ackman’s allegations, which he couched in the language of a social justice campaign. Ackman focused particularly on Herbalife’s recruitment of Latino members, many of whom are immigrants.
与此同时，米宝贝宣布允许Carl Icahn将其所有权股权增加到本公司股份的34.99％，从前最多25％。icahn目前拥有大约18.3％。
While the news doesn’t look good for Ackman today, he isnot exactly conceding defeat。如果该公司被迫最终揭示其利润最终，Ackman可以长期获胜。
但是，现在，米尔巴利生和icahn正在取代胜利吧。Herbalife表示，虽然它纠纷许多FTC的指控，但它希望解决它背后的问题，并指出该结算的规定仅适用于其美国的美国销售额，占其总量的20％。
Icahn said of the settlement, “I have the greatest confidence in Herbalife’s CEO, Michael Johnson, and the entire management team, who have skillfully led the Company through adversity, including holding firm against a high-profile PR campaign against the Company by Bill Ackman where it was alleged more than once that the Company would be shut down. Obviously, we are still here.”
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最后，关于对冲基金表现的一些好消息。根据基于伦敦的数据跟踪器预票据，第二季度，第二季度，第二季度，第二季度，第二季度平均返回了2.15％的平均水平。根据伦敦的数据跟踪Preqin的说法，在6月底，将年度到日期返回到正领域。据Preqin称，这些数字尚未突破Bollinger：自2008年以来，这些数字代表了自2008年以来的对冲基金的最糟糕的一半表现。
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The data tracker also said macro strategies fared best in June, adding 1.15 percent for a year-to-date gain of 3.18 percent. Credit strategies returned 0.44 percent last month and are up 2.53 percent for the first half, while multistrategy funds, the only other strategy to report gains in June, added 0.40 percent for the month.
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Funds-of-hedge-funds now manage more than $840 billion in assets, but this figure excludes the large advisory businesses that many of these firms have launched since institutional investors began going direct, data tracker eVestment said in its latest annual report on the funds-of-funds industry.Funds of funds现在包括投资对冲基金的28％的资产，从2008年底为行业的一半。同时，自2010年以来，管理费用下降，平均下降1.24％至1.18％，绩效费用下降自2011年以来，平均下跌8.98％至8.10％。投资车辆也变得更加集中，在2014年24日至18日至18日跌落的资金资金中位数的对冲基金中位数。