EPISODE · Jun 1, 2026 · 1H 9M
ACKMAN'S BILLION DOLLAR GRUDGE MATCH
from Sleepy Stock Market · host Sleepy Stock Market
Bill Ackman spent five years and $760 million trying to prove Herbalife was a pyramid scheme — and lost. In December 2012, Ackman held a one-billion-dollar short position and delivered an eight-hour public presentation accusing the company of fraud. Carl Icahn took the opposite side, buying 25 million shares in January 2014, and turned Ackman's crusade into a $1 billion profit for himself. The FTC fined Herbalife $200 million in 2017 but never declared it a pyramid scheme — meaning Ackman was arguably right about the damage, and still lost everything on the trade.🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SLEEPY STOCK MARKETFall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#BillAckman #Herbalife #CarlIcahn #HedgeFund #WallStreet #ShortSelling #FinanceHistory #Investing
What this episode covers
Bill Ackman spent five years and $760 million trying to prove Herbalife was a pyramid scheme — and lost. In December 2012, Ackman held a one-billion-dollar short position and delivered an eight-hour public presentation accusing the company of fraud. Carl Icahn took the opposite side, buying 25 million shares in January 2014, and turned Ackman's crusade into a $1 billion profit for himself. The FTC fined Herbalife $200 million in 2017 but never declared it a pyramid scheme — meaning Ackman was arguably right about the damage, and still lost everything on the trade.🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SLEEPY STOCK MARKETFall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#BillAckman #Herbalife #CarlIcahn #HedgeFund #WallStreet #ShortSelling #FinanceHistory #Investing
NOW PLAYING
ACKMAN'S BILLION DOLLAR GRUDGE MATCH
No transcript for this episode yet
Similar Episodes
Apr 25, 2026 ·9m
Apr 24, 2026 ·5m
Apr 24, 2026 ·9m
Apr 24, 2026 ·11m
Apr 23, 2026 ·8m
Apr 23, 2026 ·10m