By:RH
Herbalife is a multi level marketing company that sells nutrition and weight loss products. The company has been around since 1980. In 2011 the company reported net sales of $3.45 billion.
Bill Ackman is a hedge fund manager who runs Pershing Square Capital Management. Ackman has made some big bets over the last few years. Ackman made a big bet on Borders Group the big book chain that went out of business. Ackman called that investment the worst of his life. He is now making a big bet against Herbalife. Ackman is said to be making a $1billion dollar bet against the company.
Ackman has called Herbalife a ponzi scheme, and he is not the first one to do that. The Commercial Court in Belgium ruled that Herbalife was an illegal ponzi scheme in 2011.
So where do the domains come in ? Herbalife has been regging a lot of names aimed at Ackman lately. Its interesting to look into the mind of a company with these kind of things to see what extensions they register. Herbalife has been regging com/net/info and .biz. Yes .biz, the extension has long been considered a favorite of those in multi level marketing when the .com is registered.
Herbalife seems to be wasting money on some of these as there is no need for therealackman.biz and therealbillackman.biz when you have the .com. Ackman is also out registering names like the factsaboutherbalife.com and even running an adwords campaign using that domain. Herbalife regged that keyword string in .net,.biz and .info.
The company has also registered names like ackmanlies.biz,ackmanherbalife.biz,ackmanpershing.biz. Surprisingly a billionaire like Ackman does not own his first last name.com, Herbalife has registered BillAckman.net/biz/info. It will be interesting to see if Ackman tries to go after those names the way many famous people look to protect their first last name.
None of the domains have been developed or resolve so it will be interesting to see if Herbalife does anything with them and if they register anymore Ackman related domain names.
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