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Global Nutrition Company, Herbalife has just announced the appointment of Humberto Zuckermann as their new Country Director of Chile.

Zuckermann’s responsibilities will include managing day to day sales, marketing and operations of the Herbalife business in Chile. He will work hand in hand with Patricio Cuesta, Vice President of Herbalife South America.

Zuckermann has a long and distinguished background in management positions having served at several global companies over the last 15 years, aincluding, Nestle Chile, International Paper, Gerber and most recently Wyetch Inc.

Zuckermann, who is a native of Chile, was educated at the Catholic University of Chile and is fluent in both Spanish and English.

Herbalife has good reason to focus their efforts on its South American region. Over the past year, sales in Herbalife have grown almost 50% percent. Sales in the last year were $94 million dollars. This huge increase is attributed to strong recruitment of new distributors as well as favorable trends in currency. Herbalife is hoping to keep the trend going with the addition of strong management like Zuckermann.

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Michael Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of global Nutritional Supplement Company, Herbalife , has just been announced as a presenter at the 15th Annual Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference.

The annual conference will be held in New York City on September 3rd and 4th, 2008 at the Marriot Marquis.

Other participants include, Walmart, BJ’s Wholesale, CVS, and Lumber Liquidators, just to name a few. The two day conference will feature top executives from some of the largest retailers across the world assembling to discuss the state of the retail market. Among topics that they will cover will be the economy, a possible recession and trends in consumer spending.

Johnson is scheduled to speak on September 3rd at 9:30 am Eastern Time. Goldman Sachs will present a live webcast of the presentation on the Herbalife website.

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We reported a few months ago about the barrage of claims against Herbalife regarding high lead content in several of their products. After a couple months with no word about it, Herbalife has announced that the claims made by the Fraud Discovery Institute. Something smells very fishy here.

We’ve told you all about the FDI and its Founder, Barry Minkow and his determination to take Herbalife down, as well as several other MLM companies, and made claims back in May that the group had scientific proof from independent labs that Herbalife products were dangerous and contained illegal levels of lead (interestingly enough, the letter has been taken down from Fraud Discovery’s website).

Now, Herbalife and the FDI have apparently reached an agreement to avoid any further litigation, and the FDI has retracted its original claims against the nutritional supplement company. No other details of the agreement were made public. But wait a second…if you had alleged scientific proof, was it all just a lie or did FDI disappear for some other reason? Something absolutely doesn’t make sense here.

“It is evident to the Fraud Discovery Institute that Herbalife produces products that are safe, and that the company strives for continuous improvement in product quality,” the company said in a statement. Say what? Minkow has been going after Herbalife with a vengeance listing 3 separate exhibits of “proof” that Herbalife’s products contained excessive amounts of lead. In fact, there was even a lawsuit filed by a woman claiming to suffer from liver damage as a result of the products and the lawsuit broke just days after Minkow’s “findings”.

There is something VERY fishy about what is going on here. This is the second time that a company Minkow and the FDI have gone after all of a sudden reached an agreement with no public announcement of the terms. if the findings were indeed proven to be false (which we would not be surprised by) why didn’t Herbalife sue Minkow and FDI for making false claims? You cant just make claims against a company, show “proof” by “scientists” etc and then retract it after you made the press. That is absurd.

This is the second time in a short period of time that Minkow and FDI have settled against a company they were going after with no report on the settlement. Just last month, USANA reached an agreement and all of a sudden all of the negative statements Minkow and FDI were saying about that company disappeared as well. Maybe this is all in relation to the FDA cracking down on false claims made but from companies in the industry and against them but either way, Minkow is losing a lot of credibility and kudos for both USANA and Herbalife to make this noise go away.

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Herbalife announced that Dr. Linong Ji, a respected doctor at the People’s Hospital of Peking University of China has just become the newest member of their Nutrition Advisory Board.

Experts in nutrition and health from all around the world make up the Nutrition Advisory Board, who’s main function is to educate and train Herbalife Independent Distributors. The members of the board work with distributors to teach the principles of nutrition, physical activity and on how to lead a healthy lifestyle. The training helps distributors sell the Herbalife product and feel confident in selling the products and growing their business.

Ji, in addition to his duties at Peking University, is also the president of the Endocrine and Metabolic Physician Society and Director of the International Diabetes Federation of Asia.

Currently, the Herbalife Nutrition Advisory Board has 20 members with expertise in a wide variety of medical knowledge. Members of the board come from 17 countries where Herbalife has an active presence.

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