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William (Bill) Ackman is an American hedge fund manager, investor, and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management. In 2019, Ackman married his wife Nexi Oxman, a professor at MIT's media lab.
Ackman began his professional career shortly after graduating from Harvard Business School with an MBA. In 1992, Ackman co-founded Gotham Partners with David Berkowitz, a classmate and Harvard graduate.
While at Gotham, Ackman found an interest in challenging the Municipal Bond Insurance Association (MBIA). Ackman argued that MBIA's bond insurers' structured finance business should be separated from its municipal bond insurance business. He claimed that this partnership was legally restrictive, withholding billions of tradable dollars from the market. Eventually, Ackman bought credit default swaps against MBIA corporate debt and sold them for a mass profit during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Ackman then donated the profits to the Pershing Square Foundation.
In 2004, a dispute with Carl Icahn resulted in a lawsuit worth $4.5M; Ackman eventually won it. In later years, Icahn had made a deal to split profits from an investment with Ackman; however, according to Ackman, Icahn never made the split profit distribution to Ackman.
Shortly after the dispute with Icahn, Gotham closed due to insufficient "diversified" investments, which led to the founding of Pershing Square Capital Management.
In 2012, Bill Ackman purchased "short" stock in Herbalife, a nutritional supplement company. Ackman referred to Herbalife as a "pyramid scheme" and bought the stock expecting it to further depreciate over time, which would have allowed him to make significant gains in a short sale. However, Carl Icahn took the position opposite Ackman and eventually owned a 26% stake in the company. In November of 2017, Herbalife stock rose 51%, forcing Ackman to convert his stock shares to a "put." Three months later, Ackman sold the shares, admitting a need to cut losses. Ichan made an almost $1 billion in profit, while Ackman lost close to $1 billion.
