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.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And as I explained before, you short those coins at 10, they go to 100. You can lose theoretically an unlimited amount of money. And that's scary. That's why we don't short stocks. That's why I didn't short stocks before this. But this was, unfortunately, I had to have the personal lesson. So how much was, for him, personal versus... part of sort of the game of investing.
Well, he thought he could make money doing this. He wouldn't have done it if he did otherwise. He thought his bully pulpit, his ability to create a short squeeze, his control over the company would enable him to achieve this. And he made a billion, we lost a billion. So you think it was a financial decision, not a personal?
It was a personal decision to pursue it, but he was waiting for an opportunity where he could make money at our expense and was kind of a brilliant opportunity for him. Now, the irony is, well, first of all, the FTC found a few interesting facts. So one, the government launched an investigation They ended up settling with the company and the company paid $220 million in fines.
I met a professor from Berkeley a couple of years ago who told me that he had been hired by the government as their expert on Herbalife and he got access to all their data, was able to prove that they're a pyramid scheme. But the government ultimately settled with Carl because they were afraid they could possibly lose in court. So they settled with him.
But if you look at the stock, if we'd been able to stay short the entire time, we would have made a bunch of money. Because the stock had a $6 billion market cap and we shorted it. Today it's probably $1 billion. A billion and a half. So you left the short position or whatever that's called. Covered. Closed it out. Yeah. We sold Valiant. We covered Herbalife.
That was the resetting moment for the firm because it would just psychologically... And the beauty of investing is you don't need to make it back the way you lost it, right? You can just... Take your loss. By the way, losses are valuable and that the government allows you to take a tax loss and that can shelter other gains. And we just refocused.
So he's a very charming guy. So in the midst of all this, at the Hollywood one, he took me out for dinner to his favorite Italian restaurant. Really? Yeah. We were in the middle of litigation to see if he could resolve it. And he offered 10 million to my favorite charity. The problem was that it wasn't my money. It was my investor's money. So I couldn't settle with him on that basis.
But, you know, I had the chance to spend real time with him at dinner. He's funny. He's charismatic. He's got incredible stories. And, you know, actually I made peace with him over time. We had a little hug out on CNBC. Even had him to my house, believe it or not. I hosted something called the Finance Cup, which is a tennis tournament between people in finance in Europe and the US.
And we had the event at my house. And one guy thought to invite Carl Icahn. And so we had Carl Icahn there to present awards. And again, I have to say, I kind of liked the guy. But I didn't like him much during this.
I think it's possible, but again, I try to be extremely economically rational. And actually, the last seven years have been... quite peaceful. I really have not been an activist in the old form for many years. And the vast majority of even our activist investments historically were very polite, respectful cases. The press, of course, focuses on the more interesting ones.
Like Chipotle was one of the best investments we ever made. We've got four of eight board seats in And we worked with management and it was a great outcome. I don't think there's ever been a story about it. And the stock's up, you know, almost 10 times from the time we hired Brian Nicholas, CEO. But it's not interesting because there was no battle.
Whereas Herbalife, of course, was like an epic battle, even Canadian Pacific. So for a period there, most people when they meet me in person, they're like, wow, Bill, you seem like a really nice guy. But things have been pretty calm for the last seven years.
You know, it's a sad world that we live in, that one, we have terrorists, and two, that we could have such barbaric terrorism. And yeah, just a reminder of that.
With all of my posts about Israel, I'm obviously very supportive of the country of Israel, Israel's right to exist, Israel's right to defend itself. My Arab friends, my Palestinian friends, you know, were kind of saying, hey, Bill, where are you? You know, what about Palestinian lives? And I was pretty early in my life.
A guy named Marty Peretz, who's been important to me over the course of my life, a professor, first investor in my fund, introduced me to Nary, asked me when I was right out of school to join this nonprofit called the Jerusalem Foundation, which was a charitable foundation that supported Teddy Kallak when he was mayor of
I ended up becoming the youngest chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation in my 30s, and I spent some time in Israel. And the early philanthropic stuff I did with the Jerusalem Foundation, the thing I was most interested in was kind of the Palestinian, the plight of the Palestinians. and kind of peaceful coexistence.
And so I had kind of an early kind of perspective and, you know, as chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation, I would go into, you know, Arab communities and I would meet with families in their homes. You know, you get a sense of the humanity of a people and I care about humanity. I generally take the side of people who've been disadvantaged.
You know, almost all of our philanthropic work has been in that capacity. So that's sort of my natural perspective. But I don't take the side of terrorists ever, obviously. And, you know, the whole thing is just a tragedy. So to you, this is about Hamas, not about Palestine. Yes.
I mean, you know, the problem, of course, is when Hamas controls, you know, for the last almost 20 years has controlled Gaza, you know, including the education system. They're educating, you know, you see these, you know, training videos of kindergartners indoctrinating them into hating Hamas. Jews and Israel.
So it's, of course, you don't like to see Palestinians celebrating, you know, some of those early videos of October 7th with, you know, dead bodies in the back of trucks and people, you know, cheering. So it's a really unfortunate situation. But I, you know, I think about, you know, a Palestinian life is important and as valuable as a Jewish life, as a American life.
Showing 961–980 of 1,217 · page 49 of 61
← Previous
Next →