The Life And Career Of Bill Ackman — The Hedge Fund Manager Everyone’s Picking On These Days
Ever since activist investor Bill Ackman publicly declared he’s shorting Herbalife, he has become the target of the biggest names in the hedge fund community.
The tall, handsome, silver-haired billionaire founder of Pershing Square Capital Management has a reputation for being extremely confident.
However, some rival fund managers have described him as “sanctimonious” and they view going long Herbalife as an opportunity to squeeze Ackman on his short position.
“If Ackman gets squeezed I’m not going to feel sorry…” Carl Icahn said in an interview with CNBC, adding, ”The fact that I don’t like Ackman you could say is the strawberry on top of the ice cream.”
“Making money when Bill Ackman is losing money is like a ride at the circus,” Bob Chapman of Chapman Capital said on CNBC this week.
So far, fund managers who have piled on by going long Herbalife include Carl Icahn, Daniel Loeb and most recently George Soros.
Loeb exited his Herbalife position in the second quarter for a nice profit. Soros hasn’t made any comments publicly about his Herbalife position or Ackman. He reportedly asked to withdraw hundreds of millions from Ackman’s Pershing Square earlier this year, though.
Since everyone’s been picking on him, let’s get to know Ackman better.
The 47-year-old activist investor was raised in an affluent Jewish family in Westchester County, New York.
William Albert Ackman, who goes by “Bill”, was born on May 11, 1966.
He grew up in a Jewish family in Chappaqua in Westchester County, New York. He attended Horace Greeley High School.
His father was the chairman of Ackman Brothers & Singer, a commercial real estate mortgage brokerage in New York.
He attended Harvard for both undergrad and business school.
Ackman graduated magna cum laude from Harvard.
He also earned his MBA from Harvard.
He rowed crew at Harvard.
According to Bloomberg, Ackman found Harvard to be a pretty ‘WASPy’ place and that’s why he decided to join the crew team to meet other Jewish kids.
He also rowed crew in grad school. He co-captained the HBS rowing team, which was the center of a controversy for having dollar signs adorned on the team’s oars and uniforms.