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Last fall, I wrote a piece about Hedge Fund Billionaire Bill Ackman and his unmitigated assault on the health products company Herbalife; Battle of The Hedge Fund Titans. It was an interesting piece about one man’s personal vendetta and attempt to take down a famously successful American company. The short of it (no pun intended), is that Bill Ackman used his hedge fund company, Pershing Square, to take a $1 Billion short position in Herbalife. Thus, banking on the failure of the company to profit immensely, while actually attempting to trigger that failure. Herbalife fought back and the demise of...

Valeant shares plunged as much as 40 percent after an influential short-seller accused the company of fraud, saying it used its relationship with specialty pharmacies to inflate revenue. With the stock’s dramatic swings, Ackman’s portfolio lost as much as $820 million during the day but the loss lessened to roughly $650 million as the price inched up again in mid-afternoon. Cable television station CNBC reported that Ackman bought an additional 2 million shares of Valeant on Wednesday.

Houston, TX (AHN) - Police in Pasadena, Texas have recovered $2 million worth of stolen goods at three Houston locations upon arresting a suspected burglar that hit J.C. Penneys and other stores in three states. Wednesday's arrest of Ricky Orlando Garcia, 38, came after the burglary of J.C. Penney stores in Fairmont Parkway, Indianapolis, Rosenberg and Covington, Louisiana from June to August. The stores have holes in their roofs where the burglar entered.Other burglaries in Hays and Dallas counties in 2008 are being blamed on Garcia. Burglary charges have been filed against him in Rosenberg, Lafayette and St. Tammany Parish.

NEW YORK (February 24, 2017) — J.C. Penney said Friday that it will be closing anywhere from 130 to 140 stores as well as two distribution centers over the next several months as it aims to improve profitability in the era of online shopping. The closures represent about 13 percent to 14 percent of the department store operator's current store count, and less than 5 percent of total annual sales. The company said that it would also initiate a voluntary early retirement program for about 6,000 eligible employees. The news came as the Plano, Texas-based chain posted a profit in...

NEW YORK — J.C. Penney said Friday that it will be closing anywhere from 130 to 140 stores as well as two distribution centers over the next several months as it aims to improve profitability in the era of online shopping. The closures represent about 13 percent to 14 percent of the department store operator's current store count, and less than 5 percent of total annual sales. The company said that it would also initiate a voluntary early retirement program for about 6,000 eligible employees.

JCPenney, faced with unexpected light sales in mid-April, slashed payroll, froze overtime and took other drastic cost-cutting steps in an attempt to protect its bottom line, The Post has learned. As the end of its first fiscal quarter approached, the mid-priced department store told store managers to take the emergency measures because the chain faced “an expense challenge,” according to an internal memo obtained by The Post. “We have an expense challenge for the month of April and are asking all stores to do their fair share by closely monitoring all expenses,” the memo said. Employees were stunned when their...

DENVER - A CALL7 hidden-camera investigation finds the discounts at one major national retailer may not be as significant as shoppers would think, after finding prices on tags were marked up so the item can then be placed on "sale." ...

William Ackman has resigned from J.C. Penney Co.'s board as part of a deal to resolve an unusually public battle between the activist investor and the struggling department store operator. J.C. Penney's rose in premarket trading Tuesday. The announcement follows statements Ackman made last week saying he'd lost confidence in Penney's board and that its Chairman Thomas Engibous should be replaced. Ackman and the retailer's board also were bickering over how quickly the company should replace CEO Mike Ullman. Ackman's investment firm, Pershing Square Capital Management, has a nearly 18 percent stake in Penney. Penney's board also made it clear...

FULL TITLE: World war brew: J.C. Penney places huge billboard advert over Interstate Highway for kettle 'that looks just like Hitler' Retailer J.C. Penney may want to rethink the design of their new kettle after a string of customers complained it looks remarkably like Hitler. The retailer advertised the new kettle - which is exclusively available in its stores - on a huge billboard over the 405 Interstate Highway in southern California. But rather than being tempted into buying new kitchen equipment, commuters driving along the route near Culver City found themselves instantly reminded of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler....

We don’t know how, but Adolf Hitler somehow managed to sneak past a photographer, several advertising executives and J.C. Penney’s marketing department and make it onto a billboard. Disguising himself as a teapot might have had something to do with it, but once you’ve seen him, it’s impossible not to see.

J.C. Penney (JCP, Fortune 500) shares finished up 11.6% Friday following news late Thursday that hedge fund mogul George Soros has taken a large stake in the retailer, and a report from CNBC Friday afternoon that Goldman Sachs has secured $1.75 billion in financing for the company. Earlier this month, the troubled retailer announced that CEO Ron Johnson was leaving after just a year and a half. Johnson, a former Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) executive, had instituted ambitious changes at J.C. Penney stores in an attempt to remake the brand. Sales plummeted during his tenure, sinking 28% in the fourth...

J.C. Penney Co Inc Chief Executive Ron Johnson received total compensation of $1.9 million in 2012, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday, a sharp decline after a year that saw the department store chain's sales fall perilously. [Snip] Johnson's base salary was unchanged at $1.5 million, but he received no bonus or stock award in 2012 because of Penney's results, Penney said in its filing. He was eligible in 2012 for a bonus of $1.875 million.

However you’re counting the numbers, they hurt. JCPenney revealed in a regulatory filing yesterday that it finished its fiscal year ended Feb. 2 with 116,000 employees — a whopping 43,000 less than a year earlier. That’s a slashing of 27 percent — even steeper than the company’s disastrous revenue decline of 24.8 percent for the same period. It’s also more than twice the figure of 19,000 job cuts that Chief Executive Ron Johnson testified to under oath earlier this month, when asked during the company’s trial with Macy’s and Martha Stewart how many Penney employees had lost their jobs on...

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson is mounting a radical overhaul of the flailing department-store chain — but that doesn’t mean he’s stuck at the office on nights and weekends. Over the past year, the former Apple exec only rarely spends a full work week at the retailer’s headquarters in Plano, Texas, sources told The Post. “He’s there four days a week, if that much,” according to one source close to the company. Commuting on a company jet from his home in Palo Alto, Calif., sources say Johnson stays during the week at Dallas’s swanky Ritz-Carlton hotel — a perk subsided by...

Former retail titan JCPenney (JCP) is in trouble. The 1,100 store mall staple is in the middle of a radical redesign under CEO Ron Johnson, who led the roll-out of Apple's wildly successful retail locations prior to coming to JCP. In an investor presentation at the beginning of 2012, Johnson promised to do nothing short of re-invent the department store concept. But it hasn't worked out that way. JCP stock is down more than 40% in 2012, sales are collapsing, and employee enthusiasm has deteriorated to the point that the company was forced to announce in an SEC filing that...

J.C. Penny Co. was hit with a downgrade at Credit Suisse as the retailer’s sales continue to slow. Analyst Michael Exstein lowered his rating to underperform from neutral and cut his target price to US$15 from US$25 after the company reported its fifth straight quarterly loss on Friday. Mr. Exstein noted that J.C. Penny’s cash position continues to dwindle and it is expected to generate only a minimal amount of EBITDA in 2012 and 2013. The company has already sold US$525-million in non-core assets this year. “Time is no longer on J.C. Penny’s side, and going into the fourth quarter...

J.C. Penney Co. is reporting a bigger-than-expected loss and plummeting sales, as its customers continue to be turned off by a new pricing plan that gets rid of hundreds of sales in favor of every day lower prices. It also withdrew its profit guidance for the year. The department store, based in Plano, Texas, says that it lost $147 million, or 67 cents per share, in the quarter ended July 28. That compares with a profit of 14 million, or 7 cents per share. snip

J. C. Penney Company, Inc. today ousted its JCPenney brand president, Michael Francis, who oversaw the retailer's merchandising and marketing operations, with a terse statement that "We thank Michael for his hard work at jcpenney and wish him the best in his future endeavors." Francis, who was hired last October "at great expense" (as the New York Times retail reporter tweeted, in light of his whopping $12 million signing bonus) from Target is seen as taking the fall for his boss, company CEO Ron Johnson, the former Apple top retailer who oversaw JCP's new brand strategy in January. Now, of...

In its June book, J.C. Penney Co Inc. ran an ad featuring another same-sex couple, but this time it features two dads in honor of Father’s Day.

J.C. Penney Co., which is making major pricing and merchandising changes, said Tuesday that it swung to a first-quarter loss that was larger than expected and that it no longer expects to meet its previous profit forecast for the year. -snip- The net loss was $163 million, or 75 cents a share, compared with a profit of $64 million or 28 cents a share a year earlier. Sales in the quarter ended April 28 fell 20% to $3.15 billion.