Bill Ackman Biography, Age, Valeant, Herbalife, House, Divorce, Net Worth

BIOGRAPHY OF BILL ACKMAN

Bill Ackman (William Albert Ackman) is an American investor, hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is seen by some as a contrarian investor but sees himself as an activist investor. Ackman is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management

Some research published at the University of Oxford characterizes his activities with the Canadian Pacific Railway as a paradigm of “engaged activism”. It is longer-term in nature with correlated benefits to the real economy, as opposed to short-term “financial activism”.

His style of investing has been praised and criticized by US government officials, executives of other hedge funds, various retail investors, as well as the general public. Ackman’s most notable market actions include shorting MBIA bonds during the 2008 financial crisis, his proxy battle with Canadian Pacific Railway, and his stakes in Target Corporation, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Chipotle Mexican Grill. .

He held a US$1 billion short sale against the nutrition company Herbalife from 2012 to 2018. This is a company he claims is a pyramid scheme designed as a multi-marketing business. levels. Ackman’s efforts were documented in the documentary film Betting on Zero.

BILL ACKMAN EDUCATION

He received a magna cum laude bachelor of arts degree in history from Harvard College in 1988. Ackman’s thesis was “Scaling the Ivy Wall: the Jewish and Asian American Experience in Harvard Admissions.” He then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.Bill Ackman

BILL ACKMAN AGE

William Albert Ackman was born on May 11, 1966. He is 52 years old in 2018.

BILL ACKMAN FAMILY

Bill was born to Ronnie I. (née Posner) and Lawrence David Ackman, president of a New York real estate finance company, Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group, and his family is Jewish.

BILL ACKMAN WIFE | BILL ACKMAN DIVORCING

On July 10, 1994, he married Karen Ann Herskovitz, a landscape architect. It was reported on December 22, 2016 that the couple had separated.

BILL ACKMAN KIDS

Bill and Karen have three children.

BILL ACKMANPARTENAIRES GOTHAM

Bill founded the investment firm Gotham Partners with fellow Harvard graduate David P. Berkowitz in 1992. The firm later made small investments in public companies. He partnered with insurance and real estate company Leucadia National to bid for Rockefeller Center in 1995. Although the company did not win the deal, it sparked increased interest in Gotham from investors, which which led to $500 million in assets by 1998. The company had become entrenched through litigation with various outside shareholders who also held a stake in the companies Gotham invested in in 2002.

Despite an ongoing investigation into Ackman’s dealings by New York State and federal authorities, he began research challenging MBIA’s AAA rating in 2002. He was later charged a fee for the copy of 725,000 pages of statements regarding the financial services firm in connection with its law firm’s compliance with a subpoena. Bill called for a split between MBIA’s bond insurers structured finance business and its municipal bond insurance business.

Ackman argued that MBIA was legally prohibited from trading billions of dollars in credit default swap protection (CDS) that MBIA had also sold against various mortgage-backed CDOs, and was also using a second company, LaCrosse Financial Products, which MBIA described as an “orphan transformer. “. He bought credit default swaps against MBIA’s corporate debt and then sold them for a big profit during the 2008 financial crisis. Ackman said he hedged his short position in MBIA on January 16, 2009, according to the 13D filed with the SEC.

CARL ICAHN BILL ACKMAN

A feud developed between Ackman and Carl Icahn over a deal involving Hallwood Realty in 2003. They both agreed to “schmuck insurance”, under which, if Carl sold the shares within 3 years and realized a profit of 10% or more, he and Bill would split the proceeds. Carl then paid $80 per share. HRPT Property Trust acquired Hallwood, paying $136.16 per share in April 2004. Under the terms, Carl owed Ackman’s investors approximately $4.5 million, but he refused to pay and Ackman sued him. Eight years later, the court forced Carl to pay $4.5 million, plus 9% interest per annum from the date of the sale.

BILL ACKMAN PERSHING SQUARE

With $54 million from his personal funds and his former business partner Leucadia National, Ackman started Pershing Square Capital Management in 2004. The company bought a major stake in fast food chain Wendy’s International and successfully lobbied on it to sell its Tim Hortons donut chain in 2005. In 2006, Wendy’s spun off Tim Hortons through an IPO and raised $670 million for Wendy’s investors. After Bill sold his shares at a substantial profit after a leadership succession dispute, the stock price plummeted. This raised criticism that the sale of Wendy’s fastest growing unit left the company in a weaker position in the market.

His funds held a 10% stake in Target Corporation in December 2007, valued at $4.2 billion through the purchase of stocks and derivatives.

His funds then held a 38% stake in Borders Group in December 2010, and on December 6, 2010, Bill indicated that he would fund a takeover of Barnes & Noble for US$900 million.

In January 2009, during a panel discussion on Bernie Madoff, Bill defended his longtime friend Ezra Merkin saying, “Did Ezra commit a crime? I don’t think,” and “I think [Merkin] is an honest person, a smart person, an interesting person, a smart investor. Ezra was charged with civil fraud in April 2009 by New York State for “secretly funneling $2.4 billion in clients’ money into the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme without their permission.” In June 2012, a settlement was reached requiring Merkin to pay $405 million to victims, including the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.

Pershing Square Capital Management launched a new closed-end fund called Pershing Square Holdings in December 2012. It raised $3 billion in an October 2014 IPO on Amsterdam’s Euronext stock market.
Bill began buying JC Penney stock in 2010, paying an average of $22 for 39 million shares or 18% of Penney stock. In August 2013, Bill’s two-year campaign to transform the department store came to an abrupt end after he decided to step down from the board following a row with other board members.

BILL ACKMAN HEDGE FUND

In January 2015, LCH Investments named Bill one of the top 20 hedge fund managers in the world in January 2015, after Pershing Square made $4.5 billion in net gains for investors in 2014. This brought the fund’s lifetime earnings to $11.6 billion since its launch in 2004 throughout the year. -end of 2014.

BILL ACKMAN VALEANT | VALEANT BILL ACKMAN

Bill along with outgoing Valeant Pharmaceuticals CEO J. Michael Pearson and the company’s former interim CEO Howard Schiller testified before the US Senate Special Committee on Aging on April 27, 2016. The witness panel has then answered questions relating to concerns about the impact on patients and the healthcare system posed by Valeant’s business model and controversial pricing practices.

In March 2017, Bill sold his remaining 27.2 million shares in Valeant to investment bank Jefferies for around $300 million.

BILL ACKMAN HERBALIFE | BILL ACKMAN HERBALIFE SHORT

Bill released a research report that criticized Herbalife’s multi-level marketing business model, calling it a pyramid scheme in December 2012. It revealed that his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, had directly shorted the shares of the company (not with derivatives) starting in May 2012. This caused Herbalife’s stock price to plummet. Bill spent $50 million on a public relations campaign against Herbalife in 2014 that was aimed at hurting the company’s stock price.

His stance on Herbalife led to a live television discussion with Herbalife supporter Carl Icahn on January 25, 2013 for nearly half an hour on CNBC. During the segment, Carl called Ackman a “schoolyard whiner” and claimed that going public with his short stance would eventually force Bill to become the “mother of all short pushes.” Ackman admitted on Bloomberg Television on November 22, 2013 that Pershing Square’s open short position in Herbalife was “$400 million to $500 million” in the red, but that he would not be squeezed out and would hold the short ” until the end of the earth’.

Bill told Reuters he covered his short position in November 2017, but would continue to bet against Herbalife using put options with no more than 3% of Pershing Square’s funds.

He ditched his nearly $1 billion bet against Herbalife on February 28, 2018 after the company’s stock price continued to rise, opting instead to strengthen his position in United Technology.

BILL ACKMAN’S FREE

Bill has his analysts read the following books;

• Safety Analysis by Benjamin Graham
• Le Warren Buffet Way par Robert G. Hagstrom
• Confidence Game: How Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Called Wall Street’s Bluff by Christine Richard
• Beating the Street by Peter Lynch
• Income Quality by Thornton O’Glove
• Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by Seth Klarman
• The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
• One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market by Peter Lynch and John Rothchild
• You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Discover the Secret Hideaways of Stock Market Profits by Joel Greenblatt
• The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America par Lawrence A. Cunningham et Warren Buffett
• Fooling some people all the time, a short (and now complete) long story, updated with a new epilogue by David Einhorn and Joel Greenblatt

VALUE NICE BILL ACKMAN

According to Forbes Magazine, Bill has an estimated net worth of US$1.09 billion as of 2018.

BILL ACKMAN PHILANTHROPY

Bill has donated to charitable causes such as the Center for Jewish History, where he successfully led an effort to remove $30 million in debt, personally contributing $6.8 million. The donation and those of Bruce Berkowitz, founder of Fairholme Capital Management, and Joseph Steinberg, president of Leucadia National, were also the three largest individual gifts the center has ever received.

His foundation has donated $1.1 million to the Innocence Project in New York and Centurion Ministries in Princeton, NJ Bill is a signatory to The Giving Pledge, pledging to donate at least 50% of his wealth to charity.

He co-founded the Pershing Square Foundation in 2006, alongside his then-wife Karen, to support innovation in economic development, education, health, human rights, arts and urban development . Since its inception, the Pershing Square Foundation has committed over $400 million in grants and social investments. The Ackmans were on The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “Philanthropy 50” list of most generous donors in 2011.

The Cha Challened Athletes Foundation, which provides athletic equipment to people with physical disabilities, honored Ackman at a gala fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in July 2014 in New York City for helping to raise a record $2 .3 million.
Bill endorsed Michael Bloomberg as a potential candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 presidential election. He is also a longtime donor to Democratic candidates and organizations including Richard Blumenthal, Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez , the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

BILL ACKMAN SIZE

Ackman’s height is yet to be revealed.

BILL ACKMAN FACEBOOK

BILL ACKMAN ON TWITTER

BILL ACKMAN NEWS

Bill Ackman makes more layoffs at his Pershing Square hedge fund

Source; https://www.cnbc.com

Billionaire hedge fund manager William Ackman, whose investment assets have more than halved in the past three years, has made a second round of staff cuts and laid off three members of its investor relations team. investors, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The prominent manager cut an investor relations officer and two investor services executives from his New York-based hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management last week, the sources said. The layoffs come after Ackman cut its staff by 10 people in January, cutting the company to 46 people from 56.

A company spokesperson declined to comment.

The new round of layoffs shows that Ackman, one of the industry’s most vocal activist investors, is pushing ahead with an overhaul that some had questioned but has so far been successful, involving at both cost reductions and changes in investment strategy.

Pershing Square now oversees around $8 billion in assets, less than half the amount it managed at its peak in 2015. Assets have shrunk after three years of losses, prompting many investors to ask some of their money.

Unlike other managers who might try to replace outgoing capital, Ackman decided to revamp his business, telling clients he wanted to get back to his roots by running a smaller company and growing his assets solely through new better returns and not by attracting new investors.

In addition to the layoffs, key members of his team left voluntarily.

Ali Namvar, a member of the investment team, retired and Vice Chairman Steve Fraidin returned to the practice of law as a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

Brian Welch, member of the investment team, will leave at the end of the month. The investment team has historically had between eight and ten members.

In its early years, Ackman was dazzled by double-digit returns, often delivering some of the best returns in the industry.

As part of the overhaul, Ackman, one of the industry’s most visible managers, said he would stay out of the spotlight to focus on investments, leaving the client visit to others. . So far this year, the company has bet on Nike, United Technologies and Lowe’s.

So far, Ackman’s promises of delivering better returns appear to be coming to fruition. In mid-June, Pershing Square’s private hedge fund was up more than 9% while the exchange-listed fund, Pershing Square, was up 11.4% year-to-date.