Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
Adam Jeffery/CNBC via Getty Images
Bill Ackman is bringing the same ruthless energy that made him a hedge fund billionaire to politics.
Ackman is campaigning to force out leaders of elite US colleges over students’ stances on Israel-Hamas.
A Democrat donor, Ackman this year said he’s “open” to Republican presidential candidates.
Bill Ackman is known in the world of investing for risky bets that sometimes pay handsomely — and sometimes not. He waged an unsuccessful six-year campaign against dietary-supplement firm Herbalife, and made a now-legendary bet that the COVID-19 pandemic would tank the stock market.
He’s already known for combativeness in business, describing himself in a 2012 interview as “unfiltered.” Increasingly, he’s just as outspoken on politics.
Since Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel October 7, Ackman has led corporate America in condemning elite US colleges, their students, and their leaders for failing to address what he sees as a rise in on-campus antisemitism.
That campaign has resulted in Wall Street firms rescinding job offers to students, and political scrutiny of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. As Ackman and his peers kept up the pressure, Penn president Elizabeth Magill, stepped down after a rough Congressional appearance.
Here’s what you need to know about Ackman, including how he made his billions and his stances on hot-button issues.
Billionaire investor
Bill Ackman
YouTube / Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Ackman, 57, is the son of real-estate mogul Larry Ackman, who helped finance iconic New York buildings including Manhattan Plaza and Chelsea Market. The younger Ackman received his MBA from Harvard in 1992, the same year he cofounded investment firm Gotham Partners with a fellow graduate.
In his 12 years running Gotham, he made a high-profile bet against the bond insurer MBIA — which paid off during the 2008 financial crisis — and started a feud with activist investor Carl Icahn that has now rumbled on for two decades.
In 2004, Ackman used tens of millions of dollars of his own money to set up Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund he still runs today. In its lifetime, Pershing Square has delivered returns of over 1,500%, according to an annual investor letter published earlier this year. The benchmark S&P 500 stock-market index is up around 440% over the same period.
Some of Ackman’s best-known Pershing Square trades include building up big stakes in Target and Chipotle Mexican Grill, unsuccessfully shorting shares in Herbalife, and turning $27 million into $2.6 billion by hedging against stocks crashing during the pandemic. The latter move had been inspired by watching the 2011 film “Contagion”, starring Matt Damon, he said.
In 2023, Ackman disclosed a billion-dollar investment in Google parent Alphabet and has made around $200 million betting against 30-year US Treasury bonds, which cratered in late September and early October with investors fretting about the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes.
Forbes estimates his net worth to be $3.8 billion, making him the world’s 765th-richest person.
Polarizing politics
What makes Ackman a relative rarity among Wall Street’s elite is his outspokenness — in contrast with more media-shy hedge-fund legends, such as Citadel’s Ken Griffin and Point72’s Steve Cohen.
Ackman has historically donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats including Barack Obama, Al Gore, and Pete Buttigieg.
But he called on Joe Biden to step down last month, warning that the incumbent president’s “legacy will not be a good one if he is the nominee.” He also said in November he’s become “much more open to Republican candidates”, and has given money to PACs supporting Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, formerly a Democratic candidate and now independent.
It’s on Elon Musk’s social-media platform X that Ackman shares the majority of his opinions, often clashing with establishment views. His account had just under a million followers as of Wednesday.
The billionaire joined Twitter in 2017. For his first three years on the platform, he posted infrequently — but he became more active and widely-followed after the pandemic, during which he implored the US government to lock the population down and speed up its vaccination rollout.
On X, he’s voiced support for high-profile figures including Kyle Rittenhouse (“a civic-minded patriot”), Sam Bankman-Fried (“telling the truth”), and Elon Musk (“not an antisemite”). He’s also repeatedly defended RFK Jr.’s skepticism of vaccines — and called for Harvard to release the names of members of the student organizations behind a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ October attacks.
Now, Ackman has zeroed in on Harvard president Claudine Gay, as well as MIT’s Sally Kornbluth and the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, all of whom he said should “resign in disgrace” for a perceived failure to condemn on-campus antisemitism during a congressional hearing earlier this month. Magill stood down Sunday, but Harvard and MIT have released statements backing Gay and Kornbluth.
Ackman has reserved particular fury for Gay, his alma mater’s first Black president. In a post on X last week, he claimed, without presenting evidence, that someone with “first-person knowledge” told him Harvard wouldn’t consider a candidate for that position who didn’t meet Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) criteria.
Business Insider’s Linette Lopez wrote in October that Ackman’s reputation now on Wall Street was “king of uninformed, unnecessary, and seemingly unlimited tweets.”
When Magill resigned this week after her Congressional appearance, Ackman posted on X: “One down.”
With one university president’s scalp under his belt, it’s unlikely Ackman will stop.