The Federal Trade Commission settlement with Herbalife Ltd. unveiled Friday is another blow for activist investor William Ackman, already in the news this week because of his investment in troubled drug company Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc.

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“ ‘The machine is geared toward incentivizing people to buy buy, buy, buy, then recruit others to buy, buy, buy.’ ” — Lois Greisman, FTC

While the Herbalife deal includes a $200 million fine and will force the company to improve disclosures about its distributors and change its compensation structure, it falls short of deeming it a pyramid scheme, which Ackman has long argued it is. Investors responded by sending the stock up almost 20% in early trade. Ackman famously bet $1 billion against the stock in 2012, and has waged an aggressive and often bitter campaign to persuade regulators to investigate the company.

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“The complaint does not include a pyramid allegation,” said Lois Greisman, associate director of the FTC’s division of marketing practices, in emailed comments.

It does include an “unfairness allegation” relating to a compensation structure that incentivizes people to recruit other people and get them to buy the product, without regard to the sale of the product to what the FTC calls “ultimate users,” she said.

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“The machine is geared toward incentivizing people to buy buy, buy, buy, then recruit others to buy, buy, buy,” she said. “There was not much of a retail base opportunity to be had, people were not making money from retail sales.”

Further irking Ackman, the founder of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, other investors, notably billionaire Carl Icahn, took a stance against him by investing heavily in Herbalife HLF, -1.69% , further squeezing his position. Herbalife said Friday it has increased Icahn’s ownership limit in its stock to 34.99% from 25%.

Ichan was quick to weigh in on the news with a dig at his rival. In a statement, Icahn said his investment success stems from the in-depth research he carries out to ensure an understanding of the often complex and unique issues facing companies.

“One can be sure that this was the case with Herbalife where we spent considerable time and resources studying the false pyramid scheme accusations made against the company,” he said. “Unlike many of those that ‘shorted’ Herbalife, we did not rely on one or two research papers prepared by non-experts.”

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The settlement will remove an overhang on the stock and company management, who have spent time and money fighting Ackman’s allegations, said Icahn. “Now that the company has reached a settlement with the FTC, it is time to consider a range of strategic opportunities, including potential roll-ups involving competitors, as well as other strategic transactions,” said the statement.

In any case, some of the changes in Herbalife’s practices since the FTC investigation began have “not hurt earnings one iota,” Icahn said.

The news comes at a bad time for Ackman’s Pershing Square, which had lost 21% in the first half of 2016, after losing 20% of its value in 2015.

In March, Standard & Poor’s placed Pershing Square’s BBB rating on review for possible downgrade. In S&P’s ratings scale, BBB is just two notches above speculative, or “junk,” status. S&P noted that the hedge fund’s net asset value had plunged to $3.8 billion from $5.3 billion at the end of October, which contributed to its debt-to-total-assets ratio rising to 20%-plus from 15%.

Pershing has also lost money on its stake in Valeant US:VRX — which stood at 21.6 million shares as of June 9. Valeant’s stock has lost 78% of its value in the year so far.

Ackman spoke to CNBC on Thursday abut his Valeant stake, after news that ex-CEO Michael Pearson had sold more of his personal holdings than originally thought. “It’s kind of sad that he was forced to sell out at this price,” Ackman told the cable news channel.

See: Valeant’s former CEO dumped nearly $100 million in stock in past 2 weeks