Bill Ackman
speaker
1,217 appearances
6 recordings
6 series
first heard Feb 2024
last heard 3 Jun
Bill Ackman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And I took that money to buy enough stock in my public company that I could prevent an activist from taking over and effectively buy control of our little public company. And I got that done. And that I knew was the moment, the turning point. And I resolved my divorce and divorces get easier to resolve when things are going badly. I was able to resolve that. We settled the litigation.
I was buying blocks of our stock in the market. I remember a day I bought a big block of stock in the market. I get a call from Gordon Singer, who is Paul Singer's son, who runs their London part of their business. He's like, Bill, was that you buying that block? I said, yes. And he's like, fuck.
He knew that once I got that. They were not going to be able to succeed and they went away. And that was the bottom. And we've had an incredible run since then.
I mean, you know, this is a business where you're going to make some mistakes. It was a big one. It was very reputationally damaging. The press was a total disaster. But I'm not a quitter. And actually the key moments for us, we'd never taken our core investment principles and actually really written them down. Something we talked about at meetings, you know, kind of our investment team meetings.
I had a member of the team. I said, look, go find a big piece of granite and a chisel and let's take those core principles. I want them like Moses is 10 commandments. Okay. We're going to chisel them. Then we're going to put it up on the wall. And once we produce those, we put one on everyone's desk.
I said, look, if we ever again veer from the core principles, you know, hit me with a baseball bat.
And that was the bottom. And ever since then we've done, we've had the best six years in the history of the firm.
And love helps. Love helps. I literally met Neri at the absolute bottom. Our first date was September 7th of 2017. That was very close to the bottom. Actually, there's one other element to the story. So this went on for a few months after I met her. The other element is that one day I got a call from Neri. She's like, Bill, guess what? I'm like, what? Brad Pitt is coming to the Media Lab.
He wants to see my work. I'm like, that's beautiful, sweetheart. I didn't know Brad Pitt was interested in your work.
And apparently, he's really interested in architecture. Okay. Now, Nary and I were like, you know, we would WhatsApp all day, every day. We talked throughout the day. Brad Pitt shows up at the Media Lab at 10 o'clock. I, you know, talked to her in the morning. I kind of text her to see how things are going. Don't hear back.
And on WhatsApp, you can see like whether the other person's read it or not. Okay. Yeah. No response. Yeah. A couple hours later, send her the text. No response. Six o'clock. No response. Eight o'clock. No response. 10 o'clock. No response. And, you know, she finally calls me at 1030 and tells me how great Brad Pitt is.
So I had this scenario, okay, a judge is gonna find me, we're gonna lose to the judge, all my assets will disappear, and then Brad Pitt's gonna take my girlfriend. Yeah, Brad Pitt's your competition, this is great. So it was like a moment. That was sort of the bottom. And then sort of, you know, the motivational thing. I didn't want to lose to an activist.
Didn't want to lose my girl to some other guy.
Like what are you doing at night by yourself? That was a hard time. Hard time because I was separated from my wife and my kids. I was living in, you know, not the greatest apartment. You know, I had a beautiful home. And so I had to go find like a bachelor place. And I was, I didn't want to be away from my kids. I moved like 10 blocks away and I wasn't seeing them and they didn't like it.
So I ended up buying an apartment I didn't like in the same building as my kids, like with a different entrance so I could be near them. But I was home alone. I got a dog. That was Babar. We call him Babar, not the elephant. He's a black Labradoodle. He was supposed to be a mini, but he's not as mini. But I got him at six weeks old and he would keep me company. And I started meditating.
actually, uh, and, uh, a friend recommended, um, TM and I would meditate 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening. And I also big believer in exercise and, you know, weightlifting and I play tennis. And, uh, I, I had been, this is not my first, you know, proximity to disaster. I had another moment, uh, in my career, like, uh, you know, 2000, uh,
And I learned this method for dealing with these kind of moments, which is you just make a little progress every day. So today I'm going to wake up, I'm going to make progress. I'll make progress in the litigation, I'll make progress in the portfolio, I'll make progress with my life. And progress compounds. a bit like money compounds.
You don't see a lot of progress in the first few weeks, but like 30 days in, like, oh, okay. You can't look up at the mountaintop where you used to be because then you'll give up, right? But you're just, okay, just make step by step by step. And then 90 days in, you're like, okay, I was way down there. Okay, I don't look up. Just keep making progress, progress, progress.
And progress really does compound. And one day you wake up and like, wow, it's amazing how far I've come. And if you look at a chart of Pershing Square, our company, you can see the absolute bottom. You can see where we were, you can see the drop, and you can see where we are now. And that huge drop that felt like a complete unbelievable disaster looks like a little bump on the curve.
And it really gives you perspective on these things. You just have to power through. And I think the key is, you know, I've always been fortunate, like from a mental health point of view and, you know, nutrition, sleep, exercise, a little progress every day. It's, you know, very, that's it.
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