Ackman, Bill
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Ackman traces his investing philosophy to Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor (price vs. value, the market as a "voting machine" short-term but a "weighing machine" long-term, and the concept of margin of safety), and describes his firm's strategy as concentrating in a small number (historically around eight) of simple, predictable, non-disruptable businesses with wide competitive moats — citing Universal Music Group (owning irreplaceable catalogs like the Beatles and benefiting from the shift to predictable streaming subscriptions), Chipotle (a food-safety crisis crushed the stock 50%, but the underlying brand, sourcing model, and unit economics were sound, and recruiting CEO Brian Niccol turned it into one of Pershing Square's best-ever investments), and Alphabet/Google (bought after the market overreacted to Bard's rocky launch, at roughly 15x earnings with no debt, believing Google's AI capabilities and data advantages were underrated). He argues AI is uniquely dangerous to investors precisely because it is "the ultimate disruptable technology" that can strip profitability from even dominant incumbents (invoking Kodak and Polaroid as cautionary tales), while arguing Google, Meta, and other tech giants that got "fat and happy" have been forced by competitive shock into real efficiency gains.
He describes activist investing as restoring a historical balance of power between shareholders and entrenched management that eroded once ownership diffused into passive mutual and index funds, walking through the escalation from early "outside the boardroom" campaigns (buying Wendy's stock and commissioning an independent fairness opinion to force a Tim Hortons spinoff) to board seats and full proxy contests — most dramatically the Canadian Pacific Railway battle, where Pershing Square built an all-Canadian director slate (recruiting Rebecca McDonald and famed railroader Hunter Harrison after establishment figures declined to challenge the incumbent board socially), rented Toronto's largest hall for a public presentation, and won 99% of the shareholder vote after management realized only the night before that they'd lost. He credits the 2008 General Growth Properties investment — buying 25% of a mall REIT trading at 34 cents a share during the financial crisis, correctly betting the bankruptcy code would preserve shareholder value once assets exceeded liabilities — as one of history's best hedge-fund trades, turning roughly $60 million into over $3 billion, aided by a chance social connection (Maddie Bucksbaum) that got him onto the board.
Ackman details his firm's most severe crisis: the ~$4 billion loss on Valeant Pharmaceuticals (a passive investment that violated Pershing Square's core principles), which triggered a cascading ~30%+ portfolio drawdown as rival activist Carl Icahn and others shorted Pershing Square's other holdings and squeezed its Herbalife short, coinciding with his divorce and litigation from another activist (Elliott Associates) betting his public vehicle would be forced to liquidate. He recounts borrowing $300 million from JPMorgan — the first time he ever borrowed against securities — to buy enough of his own public vehicle to block a takeover, meeting his now-wife Neri Oxman at the exact low point, and using daily incremental progress, meditation, exercise, and having the firm's core investment principles literally chiseled into granite as the turnaround catalyst. He separately describes the personal, decade-long Carl Icahn feud stemming from a Hallwood Realty Partners "schmuck insurance" contract Icahn allegedly circumvented and only paid after years of litigation, and the Herbalife short (arguing it was a predatory multi-level-marketing pyramid scheme targeting undocumented immigrants) where Icahn's counter-position, market power, and short squeeze ultimately cost Pershing Square roughly a billion dollars even though the FTC later fined Herbalife $220 million.
On October 7th and its aftermath, Ackman describes himself as "pro-Palestinian" in the sense of caring about ordinary Palestinians' welfare (citing his history chairing the Jerusalem Foundation and youth work in Arab communities) while being unequivocally opposed to Hamas, and expresses hope that Gulf state-led governance and reconstruction (with Saudi/UAE involvement) could eventually bring Singapore- or Dubai-style prosperity to the region. He recounts becoming heavily engaged in the Harvard presidency crisis after October 7th: contrasting Dartmouth's swift, dialogue-based response to Harvard's delayed, evasive one; failed private and public attempts (including a "dare to be great" open letter) to get board chair Penny Pritzker and president Claudine Gay to act; and the congressional testimony in which Gay, MIT's president, and Penn's president all answered "it depends on the context" when asked whether calls for Jewish genocide violated campus bullying policies — a clip Ackman posted that reportedly drew ~110 million views. He argues Harvard's ultimate failure was one of governance (a self-perpetuating, unelected board with no shareholder-style accountability mechanism) compounded by a campus-wide "DEI" ideology — which he distinguishes from small-d/e/i values he supports — describing it, informed by Christopher Rufo's book America's Cultural Revolution, as an oppressor/oppressed framework descended from 1960s Black Power movement thinkers who pivoted to influencing universities, government, and corporations after the movement's violent phase failed.
He expresses regret that Gay's eventual resignation was formally attributed to plagiarism findings (which he still believes were real, given a pattern across roughly 76 identified instances) rather than the leadership failure he considers the true underlying problem, arguing this obscures the actual governance lesson for Harvard's board. This section leads into an extended, personal account of Business Insider's subsequent plagiarism allegations against his wife, MIT Media Lab scientist Neri Oxman: Ackman argues the outlet's claims — based on a handful of missing quotation marks and Wikipedia-sourced common-knowledge definitions in a 330-page dissertation — did not meet MIT's own defined standard for academic fraud (which requires provable intent, not honest clerical error), calls the story "malice-driven" (citing an email from the reporter that explicitly invoked Ackman's role in Gay's ouster), and states Pershing Square is preparing possible defamation litigation against Business Insider and its parent Axel Springer. He frames the episode as illustrative of a broader, clicks-driven collapse in journalistic incentives, contrasting it with X/Twitter's ability to let him respond to unfavorable coverage (including a recent Washington Post story) directly to a large audience within hours — quoting Warren Buffett's line that "the only person who'll cause you more harm than a thief with a dagger is a journalist with a pen" — and argues platforms like X provide a necessary counterbalance to both mainstream media and government overreach (citing the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-era lockdown/mask/vaccine debates as examples of suppressed dissent).
On politics, Ackman recounts qualified 2016 optimism about Trump as a pro-business "CEO of America" figure who could accelerate growth and pressure NATO allies to spend more on defense, but says he was ultimately disappointed by Trump's corrosive effect on civility, chaotic staff turnover, and delayed response to the January 6th Capitol riot (which he calls a riot, not an insurrection, but one Trump could have stopped sooner). He argues Biden's cognitive decline makes him unfit to continue and blames Biden's family and inner circle for not urging him to step aside, and describes his support for Congressman Dean Phillips's long-shot primary challenge (citing Phillips's bipartisan record, financial independence from needing the office, and hope that a strong Michigan primary showing could catalyze a Biden withdrawal) as an attempt to give voters a genuinely difficult, appealing choice rather than pure partisan tribalism. He closes with broad optimism: confidence in American economic resilience and capitalism, excitement about AI as a net-positive productivity and scientific-discovery enabler despite "Terminator-like" fears, belief that Gulf-state-led reconstruction could resolve the Gaza conflict within months, hope that universities undergo a "corrective phase" restoring merit-based, viewpoint-diverse governance, and confidence that Neri Oxman's new venture-scale materials/design lab will produce transformative, environmentally beneficial products.
Excerpts
On the core lesson from Benjamin Graham that shaped his entire career:
“You have to understand the difference between price and value. Price is what you pay, value is what you get... the stock market in the short term is a voting machine... But in the long term, the stock market's a weighing machine, much more accurate. It's going to tell you what something's worth.”
On the moment he realized his 2017 crisis (Valeant losses, Icahn's Herbalife squeeze, divorce, and Elliott's threat to force liquidation) had reached bottom:
“I borrowed $300 million from JP Morgan in the middle of this mess... I took that money to buy enough stock in my public company that I could prevent an activist from taking over... I remember a day I bought a big block of stock in the market, and I get a call from Gordon Singer... 'Bill, was that you buying that block?' I said, 'Yes.' And he's like, 'Fuck.' ... And that was the bottom.”
On why he believes Harvard's board, not just its president, was the deeper failure during the campus crisis:
“When a company fails, most people blame the CEO. I generally blame the board... The board's hand was sort of forced from the outside, whereas they should have made their own decision from the inside... Harvard has a disastrous governance structure, which is why we have the problem we have.”