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Bill Ackman

Founder and CEO, Pershing Square Capital Management · 1 appearance on the record.

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investorfounderexecutive@BillAckman ↗pershingsquareholdings.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Bill Ackman is an activist hedge fund manager who oversees concentrated public equity investments through Pershing Square Capital Management, which he founded in 2004 after co-founding Gotham Partners. He is widely recognized for high-stakes corporate campaigns and macro hedges.

33statements → 8claims → 4claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.79/5average certainty → 2.45/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 23said about them ↓

4 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 3 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 4 assertions · 7 opinions · 11 insights · 7 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Bill argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Ackman: Herbalife runs paid Google ads targeting my name
“Herbalife is still running a negative campaign about me personally, which I find fairly remarkable. The way you can see this is if you Google my name I don't know if you want to do this right now. What will pop up is an advertisement And it, the advertisement …”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 42:49 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Bill Ackman on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Bill Ackman said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Ackman: I really admire Elon Musk for handling near-catastrophe
“Look at Elon Musk. He's been on the brink of failure however many times, and it's, I think, why he's beloved by many, hated perhaps by some, but I really admire the guy in terms of how he's dealt with, you know, near catastrophe”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 8:59 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up
Disclosure
Ackman Attributes Business Judgment Failures to Distraction From Divorce
“It is, it can be very distracting to be contemplating whether one should stay married While running a business that requires, you know, a lot of, you know, judgment and clarity of thinking, and you know, I ultimately made some, you know, failures of judgment i…”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 12:34 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up
Insight
Ackman: Twitter gave a multi-day lead over traditional news during COVID
“And beginning sort of, as I got deeper into coronavirus, I started using Twitter actually as a news feed and found it to be very, very helpful and interesting. You know, almost having the experience of reading the news a couple of days before You read the news…”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 16:41 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up
Insight
Ackman: Markets overreact because marginal trading is driven by quarterly focus
“The markets generally overreact to short-term information and noise, because many stocks are traded on the basis of, you know, the marginal buyer and seller is a short-term investor trying to predict whether the stock's going to go up or down on the quarter.”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 25:28 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up
Assertion Supported
Ackman: 85% of Pershing Square's capital is permanent public capital
“85% of our capital is in the, you know, comes from a public company. And as a result, we have very, very long duration money, and we don't need to worry about this quarter or this year in making decisions, and that, I think, is a huge advantage.”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 27:00 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up
Assertion Supported
Ackman: Dedicated black swan funds surged 1,000% in market crash
“All they do is put on these kind of hedges waiting for disaster, and they're, you know, some of them are up a thousand percent. You know, some of the smaller ones are up a thousand percent in the last month or so.”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 54:01 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ackman: Mall restructurings will convert excess retail into mixed-use facilities
“And so, again, you'll see restructurings where the lender to the mall ends up with the asset. Someone entrepreneurial decides, you know what, we don't need this much retail. We'll make half of it a hospital, medical facility, office, apartments, and then there…”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 1:14:09 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up
Disclosure
Ackman: I invest in startups partly to identify potential competitive threats
“And I'm a relatively small investor in, you know, startups and I do it for fun. I do it because, you know, occasionally I make a good investment and also it helps me see the future in terms of what potential threats are coming. That might disrupt either a busi…”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 36:32 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up
Prediction Open · timeframe Apr 2030
Ackman: Pershing Square will eventually hold 100% of capital in public vehicle
“The vast majority of our capital today is 85%, you know, over time that will be 90 or 95, or eventually a hundred percent of our capital will be in a public enterprise that we're the largest shareholder of.”
Bill Ackman Apr 28, 2020 ▶ 1:26:49 #82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up

The other half of the tape: Bill Ackman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 19 times in 3 episodes on the Knowledge Project. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Shane Parrish 9Andrew Wilkinson 8Keith Creel 1Bethany McLean 1

Statements about Bill Ackman, by other people (4)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Creel: Bill Ackman offered $200M when asked for $100M in unplanned capex
“I went into the board meeting, and I said, we have an issue. For me to optimize my service, I've got to run west out of Saskatoon, not east, but I need a hundred million dollars to spend on rail and ties and ballasts, and that was not planned for at all, and B…”
Keith Creel Nov 29, 2022 ▶ 59:40 Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad
Disclosure
Wilkinson spent $60,000 on a charity lunch to diligence Bill Ackman
“What I ended up doing is I spent 60,000 dollars bidding on a charity lunch where I'm like, okay, I get to donate charity. I get to meet this interesting guy. And my plan was that if he was an asshole, I would sell all of it as soon as we got out. And if I like…”
Andrew Wilkinson Jul 26, 2022 ▶ 53:58 Andrew Wilkinson: Tiny Holdings
Assertion Supported
McLean: Unlike Enron, Valeant attracted smart money like Sequoia and Bill Ackman
“With Enron, when you got to what was commonly considered the smart money, people either weren't invested in Enron, or they were short. And it was largely long-only funds and index funds, and what we think of in terrible terms, but the dumb money that was inves…”
Bethany McLean Jun 9, 2020 ▶ 15:09 #85 Bethany McLean: Crafting a Narrative
Disclosure
Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings is Wilkinson's only public market holding
“So basically Bill is my only public holding. So that's my kind of backup retirement plan. I just keep stocking my money in Pershing and let Bill handle the public investing”
Andrew Wilkinson Jul 26, 2022 ▶ 54:43 Andrew Wilkinson: Tiny Holdings

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00101202202020212022episodesmentions
012202020212022episodes it came up in
0051102202020212022episodesmentions per episode
2022 18 mentions in 2 episodes 9 per episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
#82 Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up Apr 28, 2020 1h 19m
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