Ackman & HHH - Creating the modern BRK
I'm sure a lot of you may have seen the article in the FT today (or via Matt Levine) talking about Bill Ackman taking over HHH at $85/share and using it as his modern day Berkshire Hathaway. Opinions on this?
Personally, I think this is the best chance he has at truly cementing his legacy as a generational money manager, but I don't think he's nearly as disciplined as Buffett/Munger (ie Netflix investment), but does have the boon of having a greater social presence at his age and perhaps stronger political connections than Buffett (at least for the next 4 years). I'm just kind of confused why he wouldn't do it with a bit smaller company.
It's definitely an interesting platform to start with. Wonder what the odds are he converts to running an investment holdco full-time and shuttering his fund are vs it just becoming a major holding of PS.
Too busy shitposting on Twitter, he doesn't have the rocks
In all fairness, he has a good number of long-term analysts, plus a few recently hired 2+2s, and they own like 10 stocks. I don't think his input at the fund is needed more than a few hours per day.
Ahh yes, the preftigious 2+2 analysts will now save the day. I was worried working for Ole Billy was not a desirable outcome but now I know that they have hired 2+2 analysts with top tier banking (think EB or Top BB (and I also mean Top BB sub-group)) and top tier private equity (now we are getting there, can’t wait to take a private equity view on public market investments) and they are sure to make billions.
Who? The last 2+2hire was 2021.
$85/share is a joke of an offer with NAV near $120. Most absurd is "In consideration for services rendered, Pershing Square Holdco will receive a fee of 1.5 percent per annum of the equity market capitalization of the Company, paid quarterly"
Recent investments have been iffy as well (Nike)
Yeah not sure what's this new brain rotting on X and sucking up to Elon is all about. I've been a LT fan of his investing, but I've increasingly found him rather distasteful.
The way he just threw his investment team under the bus on Lex Friedman saying he had "delegated the investment process" as a way to rationalize the Valeant loss was a bit odd. I'd be fuming if I was his Analyst.
And that's leaving out the all the double standards. Like "DEI is bad" - ok sure, agreed, but he wasn't shy about sending around a press release patting himself on the back for hiring an all black firm post George Floyd - when that was trendy.
If the deal goes through I hope HHH shareholders get better fiduciary responsibility than PSH. Instead of focussing the massive discount to NAV in the listed vehicle - he thought a better use of time would be to spend day & night on X word vomiting to amplify negative coverage of Gay, but then cry foul when his wife faced similar scrutiny.
Not sure where the intellectual honesty is in portraying himself as some type of free speech absolutist, but campus students are not entitled to theirs (regardless of political affiliation) - probably because it isn't aligned with his.
For being a self-promoting investor keen to be labelled as a "truth seeker" he sure posts a lot of garbage that's most of the time turns out to be proven factually incorrect and outright extremist lies...
HHH shareholders would be wise assess if the whole "greater fool theory" he spun so passionately in private correspondence to select int'l investors during his failed IPO - that was only forced to be made public as it turned out he broke SEC rules. Baffling how one take pride in saying "yeah my IPO is expensive BUT my retail following from social media presence will be buyers so you'll make money from them"... Ffs man...
No wonder Baupost pulled their order. Such a shit show and act of desperation to capitalize on self-proclaimed MAGA tailwinds, as everyone's around DJT have managed to grow their influence, except Billy.
never liked ackman. nothing humble in him.
Ackman came to my B School class and talked about Valeant. It was funny to hear his revisionist history about what went wrong.
One of the biggest egos in the industry and his idol Buffett probably thinks he’s a hack too.
HBS or CBS?
Not surprised - what was the spin this time?
Between his recent devolution into Twitter/MAGA brainrot and meeting Steve Schwartzmann a few years ago - and leaving pretty unimpressed - wonder how many of the BSDs that people worship here are mediocre/slightly above average people who fell into the right place at the right time.
I had a meeting with someone who was near Ackman level wealth via a cold email, and I wasn’t all that impressed either, but to me it just shows that marketing your fund is more important than anything. Think about Joel greenblatt, better returns than most HFs over 30 years and his net worth is $1bn.
He was willing to talk to you…obviously he’s an idiot
His main fund that has the crazy IRR only operated for 10 years I think, he just switched to a FoF and family office.
My favorite Ackman crusade was when he accused everyone that has ever written anything of plagiarism and then when someone pointed out his wife is also guilty he pivoted overnight to “what is plagiarism, really? guess we’ll never know” and moved on.
What happened to this dude? Goes from a HF titan (albeit with some bad misses along the way) to shitposting and riding this political train. Imagine being an investor in his fund and seeing him tweet like 20 times a day replying to rando 20 year old crypto bros on X. It’s sort of mind boggling…I guess Twitter is that addicting idk. Obviously a smart dude but he’s becoming a bit crazy on X, especially after the whole plagiarism thing. It was kinda funny to watch, pretty bizarre all around.
Billy running a Zoom on Freddie and Fanny to be listed with a hypothetical return scenario in mind so he can finally cash in from retail investors buying in after over a decades hold.
Billy ends meeting with: "DJT is a deal maker... I'm somewhat of a deal maker myself"... Couldn't make this up.
imagine being an intelligent 2+2 analyst from the best group and school to just create slides quoting DJT in an investment pitch.
i'd do it for 5 mil a year
sorry i might be a smooth brained non investor but why does someone need to buy something like HHH to emulate BRK?
permanent capital
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