William Albert Ackman is an American wealthy hedge fund manager who started and runs the hedge fund management company Pershing Square Capital Management. He is an active investor because of the way he makes investments. As of December 2023, his net worth was estimated at $3.8 billion.
What is Bill Ackman’s Nationality?
Bill Ackman holds American citizenship. His parents were Ronnie I. Ackman and Lawrence David Ackman; Lawrence was the chairman of the Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group in New York City, and he grew up in Chappaqua, New York.
His Jewish ancestry is Ashkenazi. He graduated with honors from Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a BA in social studies in 1988. A Jewish and Asian American Perspective on the Harvard Admissions Process was the title of his thesis. After attending Harvard Business School, he earned an MBA in 1992.
Bill Ackman’s Net Worth
American hedge fund manager and philanthropist Bill Ackman is worth $3.8 billion. He became wealthy by founding and leading Pershing Square Capital Management LP, a company also known by his other name, William Ackman.
Bill has initiated several prominent activist efforts against firms such as Wendy’s and Herbalife, most notably through Pershing. Previously, Ackman was a co-founder of Gotham Partners, an investing business.
How Much Real Estate Does Bill Ackman Have?
Bill purchased a waterfront mansion in the Hamptons town of Bridgehampton in 2011 for $22 million. They spent $23.5 million on a six-acre property nearby in 2015. Bill paid $91.5 million for a penthouse in the One57 building in NYC, which is situated at 157 W 57th Street, in 2015.
Bill spent $22.5 million in 2018 to purchase the 13-room penthouse at 6-16 West 77th Street in New York City. Author Nancy Friday owned the flat for forty years until she died in 2017. It was really four independent apartments that were united across the 16th and 17th levels.
Ackman submitted designs to the city shortly after purchasing the penthouse, allowing him to construct a two-story glass box on the roof. He was eventually granted clearance in May 2022. Numerous letters both in favor of and against the proposal were sent to the city building commission.
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Bill Ackman Personal Life
In 1994, landscape architect Karen Herskovitz became Bill Ackman’s first wife. Together, they raised three children before getting divorced in 2018. Ackman wed Neri Oxman, a professor at MIT and designer, early the next year; the two are parents to a child.
How Did Bill Ackman Start His Career?
Gotham Partners
Ackman and Harvard alum David P. Berkowitz launched Gotham Partners after college. Investors took notice, and by the late 1990s, the firm had $500 million under control.
However, by 2002, Gotham was in litigation with several external shareholders who owned shares in its investments. Ackman profited greatly from buying and selling credit default swaps against MBIA corporate debt during the 2007-08 financial crisis.
Pershing Square Capital Management
In 2004, Ackman launched Pershing Square Capital Management with roughly $54 million of his own money. The corporation became tremendously profitable, earning $11.6 billion by 2014.
Bill Ackman is one of the world’s most notorious hedge fund managers:
Bill Ackman is one of the world’s most notorious hedge fund managers.
In 2004, with $54 million, Ackman started Pershing Square Capital Management and today has a net worth of more than $3.5 billion.
Here are 11 lessons from the man himself.
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— Commonstock (@JoinCommonstock) April 5, 2023
Pershing owns large shares in Wendy’s, Target, General Growth Properties, JCPenney, Procter & Gamble, and Chipotle. When Valeant’s medication price and operational scandals surfaced, it sold its 9% interest at a $4 billion loss.
Pershing bought 10% of Universal Music Group in 2021, among other large investments. Pershing bought a $1.1 billion Netflix position the next year but sold it all after Netflix’s price plunged 35% in April. Thus, Pershing lost $430 million.
Herbalife Gamble
Ackman published a study at the end of 2012 attacking Herbalife, a nutrition marketing company, for what he called a pyramid scheme in its business model. Consequently, Pershing sold $1 billion worth of the company’s shares short, which dropped the price of Herbalife’s stock.
Ackman invested $50 million in an activist campaign against Herbalife in 2014 in an attempt to lower the stock price of the company. Shortly after, rival investor Carl Icahn bet $1 billion that Herbalife’s stock price would rise—virtually the exact opposite wager. Another name for this move is a “short squeeze.”
In 2014, the FTC and FBI began looking into Herbalife as a result of Ackman’s tenacious activism. The FBI and the US attorney’s office in Manhattan both looked into Ackman’s activities the following year. In the end, a settlement was reached between Herbalife and the FTC in the summer of 2016.
His conflict with the company served as the basis for the 2016 documentary “Betting on Zero.” Ackman canceled his almost $1 billion wager against Herbalife in the early months of 2018 as the firm’s stock price continued to rise. In the end, Ackman lost $500 million on his Herbalife wager.