Pershing Square Capital Management

Bill Ackman

Bill Ackman is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, the activist hedge fund he built into one of the most closely watched names in investing. Raised in New York, Ackman graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in social studies before earning his MBA at Harvard Business School. Out of school in 1992 he co-founded Gotham Partners with classmate David Berkowitz, and the two built a name as aggressive activist investors — a high-profile bid for Rockefeller Center in 1995 put the young firm on the map. When Gotham wound down amid litigation and shareholder disputes in the early 2000s, Ackman launched Pershing Square, which began operating in 2004. The firm is built around a simple, concentrated philosophy: find a small number of good businesses trading at prices Ackman considers too cheap, buy large stakes in them, and hold for the long term. He describes the goal as acquiring "the best businesses in the world" at attractive prices, and he does not sit quietly — as a major shareholder he pushes for board seats, changes in management, and operational fixes. His approach produced a successful proxy fight against Canadian Pacific Railway in 2011 and stakes in companies such as Chipotle and Target. The trade that defined him, though, was on the other side of the market. From 2012 to 2018 Ackman held a $1 billion short position against the nutrition company Herbalife, which he publicly called a pyramid scheme — a campaign that drew in rival Carl Icahn, regulators, and a documentary, and became one of the most publicized and hotly contested bets in hedge fund history. It ended in losses, but the episode cemented his reputation as a high-conviction investor willing to make big, public arguments about the companies he bets on.