Bill Ackman

William Albert Ackman is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and activist investor. He founded Pershing Square Capital Management in 2004 and is known for high-conviction, concentrated bets on public companies. Bill Ackman's 2020 Corporate Credit Short: In late February 2020, anticipating a massive economic shutdown from COVID-19, Ackman's Pershing Square deployed $27 million in premium into OTC Credit Default Swaps (CDS). Instead of shorting corporate bonds directly—which would have drained liquidity—Ackman used OTC derivatives to buy default insurance covering roughly $71 billion of corporate debt. As global credit markets melted down, the contracts surged in value. Ackman cashed out of the OTC contracts about one month later, converting $27 million into $2.6 billion in cash—a roughly 96× return. He then redeployed much of that capital into depressed equities near the market bottom.

Ackman grew up in Chappaqua, New York, the son of real estate financier Lawrence Ackman. At Harvard he studied social studies and read Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor, which set him on a path toward value investing and activism.

Ackman is one of the most prominent activist investors on Wall Street, with campaigns at companies including Herbalife, Chipotle, and Canadian Pacific Railway. He has been a vocal public commentator on markets, corporate governance, and university policy.

Ackman married Karen Herskovitz in 1994; they divorced in 2018. He married designer and MIT professor Neri Oxman in 2019. He has four children.