Platform Specialty Products CEO Retires, Ackman Hit Again

It’s been a wild ride for Platform Specialty Products and Bill Ackman. When the firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange on January 24, 2014, trading at $14.40 per share, its stock price rocketed to $21.69 in a little over one month. The global producer of high-technology specialty chemicals, with large agricultural and global currency exposure, would move to $27.24 by the end of May, 2014 as it embarked on a series of acquisitions. But then beginning on June 5, 2015, a new trend would emerge, one that sent the stock on a downward spiral as fundamental factors driving…