1. William Albert Ackman was born on May 11,1966 and is an American billionaire hedge fund manager who is the founder and chief executive officer of Pershing Square Capital Management, a hedge fund management company.
47 Facts About Bill Ackman
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Bill Ackman has expressed public support for Israel's actions in the Gaza war and has demanded the publication of the names of Harvard students involved in signing a letter condemning statements from Israeli officials.
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Bill Ackman's thesis was titled "Scaling the Ivy Wall: The Jewish and Asian American Experience in Harvard Admissions".
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In 1992, Ackman founded the investment firm Gotham Partners with fellow Harvard graduate David P Berkowitz.
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In 1995, Bill Ackman partnered with the insurance and real estate firm Leucadia National to bid for Rockefeller Center.
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Bill Ackman called for a division between MBIA's structured finance business and its municipal bond insurance business.
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Bill Ackman argued that MBIA was legally restricted from trading billions of dollars of credit default swap protection that it had sold against various mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations, and was using a second corporation, LaCrosse Financial Products, which MBIA described as an "orphaned transformer".
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Bill Ackman reported covering his short position on MBIA on January 16,2009, according to the 13D filed with the SEC.
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In 2004, with $54 million from his personal funds and from his former business partner Leucadia National, Bill Ackman started Pershing Square Capital Management.
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In early 2024, Ackman aimed to raise $25 billion to take Pershing Square public.
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Bill Ackman was chairman of Howard Hughes Holdings, one of Pershing's longest-held investment, from 2010 until 2024, when he stepped down from its board.
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In December 2012, Bill Ackman issued a research report that criticized Herbalife's multi-level marketing business model, calling it a pyramid scheme.
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Bill Ackman disclosed that his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, sold short the company's shares directly starting in May 2012, causing Herbalife's stock price to drop.
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In 2014, Bill Ackman spent $50 million on a public relations campaign against Herbalife.
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Markey later told the Boston Globe that his staff had not informed him that Bill Ackman stood to benefit financially from his actions and defended the letters as a matter of consumer rights.
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The New York Times reported that Bill Ackman had donated $32,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on April 30,2013, the same day Markey won the Democratic primary for the Senate special election in Massachusetts.
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In March 2014, The New York Times reported that Bill Ackman had employed tactics to undermine public confidence in Herbalife to lower its stock price, including pressuring state and federal regulators to investigate the company, paying individuals to travel to and participate in rallies against it, and boosting Pershing Square's spending on donations to nonprofit Latino organizations.
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On March 12,2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that prosecutors in the Manhattan US attorney's office and the FBI were investigating whether people hired by Bill Ackman "made false statements about Herbalife's business model to regulators and others in order to spur investigations into the company and lower its stock price".
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On November 22,2013, Bill Ackman admitted on Bloomberg Television that Pershing Square's open short position in Herbalife was "$400 million to $500 million" in the red, but that he wouldn't be squeezed out and would hold the short "to the end of the earth".
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On February 28,2018, Ackman exited his near billion-dollar bet against Herbalife after the company's stock price continued to rise.
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Ahead of the 2020 stock market crash, Bill Ackman hedged Pershing Square's portfolio, investing $27 million to purchase credit protection, insuring the portfolio against steep market losses.
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On March 18,2020, in a phone interview with CNBC, Bill Ackman called upon President Donald Trump for a "30-day shutdown" of the American economy to slow the spread of coronavirus and minimize loss of life and ensuing economic destruction resulting from the shutdown.
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Bill Ackman warned that without intervention, hotel stocks were "going to zero" and said that America could "end as we know it".
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Bill Ackman cautioned US companies to stop stock buyback programs because "hell is coming".
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Bill Ackman later received criticism for actively buying discounted equity stakes in the very companies he was warning could fail; however, Bill Ackman already had realized roughly half of the gains before appearing during the CNBC interview.
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Bill Ackman has said that his most successful investments have always been controversial, and that his first rule of activist investing is to "make a bold call that nobody believes in".
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From 2012 to 2018, Ackman held a US$1 billion short against the nutrition company Herbalife, a company he has described as a pyramid scheme designed as a multi-level marketing firm.
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Bill Ackman's efforts were reported in the documentary film Betting on Zero.
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Critics of Bill Ackman have called him an oligarch, basing accusations on his use of market manipulation and use of his wealth to push for his own policy preferences, particularly with respect to Israel.
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In December 2022, Bill Ackman auctioned a lunch with himself for charity in partnership with the David Lynch Foundation.
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The proceeds would go toward helping "New York's frontline healthcare workers, police and veterans who battle anxiety, depression, addiction and suicide every day", with Bill Ackman matching the winning bid to support the foundation.
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In February 2023, Bill Ackman announced that his foundation and an anonymous donor would together fund Sabatini US$25 million over five years to establish and run a new research laboratory.
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Bill Ackman has expressed public support for Israel's actions in the Gaza war.
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Bill Ackman posted, "One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists," and the names "should be made public so their views are publicly known".
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Bill Ackman's stance had support by other CEOs such as Jonathan Neman.
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Screenings of the film were conducted in New York City and, with Bill Ackman's help, at Harvard University, his alma mater.
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Bill Ackman argued that her response to antisemitism was "insufficient" and amplified allegations that she engaged in plagiarism.
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Bill Ackman is a longtime donor to Democratic candidates and organizations, including Richard Blumenthal, Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
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Bill Ackman endorsed Michael Bloomberg as a prospective candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 presidential election.
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Bill Ackman supported the Democratic Party and endorsed Congressman Dean Phillips for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2024 presidential primaries.
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On July 14,2024, Bill Ackman endorsed Trump in the aftermath of his attempted assassination.
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Bill Ackman married Karen Ann Herskovitz, a landscape architect, on July 10,1994.
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In 2018, Bill Ackman became engaged to Israeli-American designer Neri Oxman.
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In January 2019, Oxman and Bill Ackman married at the Central Synagogue in Manhattan, and they had their first child together in spring 2019.
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Bill Ackman is a keen amateur tennis player and controversially commented that he could play a close and even doubles match against John McEnroe in a Bloomberg News interview with David Rubenstein in 2020.
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Bill Ackman owned a Gulfstream G550 business jet, as of 2017.
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Bill Ackman owns a $90 million penthouse apartment in Manhattan, among other residential properties.