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Tag: Bill Ackman

  • Michael Burry’s Big Bets Still Move Markets—Even When He’s Wrong

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    Even when his calls miss, Michael Burry’s reputation keeps Wall Street watching his every move. Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

    Michael Burry earned a whopping $800 million by shorting the U.S. housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis. Whether the famed investor has made comparable money since then is far less clear. Still, his reputation endures. Investors continue to closely track his high-profile bets, hoping to ride his coattails to similar gains.

    Burry ran the hedge fund Scion Asset Management and now publishes commentary through a weekly newsletter, though he discloses little about performance. He has also repeatedly deleted and reactivated his X account over the years, but remains active on the platform, where he has roughly 1.6 million followers and frequently posts cryptic market takes.

    His celebrity status was cemented by the 2015 film The Big Short, which turned Burry into a household name. That visibility has granted him a level of credibility few investors retain for so long, even when their predictions miss the mark.

    “People like superstars, and they love to listen to folks who they think are smart and successful,” Tom Sosnoff, founder of investment media network Tastylive, told Observer. “He is a personality and a contrarian. He is interesting and pretty famous in the world of finance. Love him or not, people listen to him.”

    While Burry’s early success is well documented, his performance since then is harder to evaluate. As a hedge fund manager, he is only required to disclose limited information through quarterly filings such as 13Fs, which reveal long equity positions but not short positions, derivatives or overall performance. As a result, the full picture of his gains and losses remains largely opaque.

    There have been claims that Burry has made more than $1 billion in total trading profits, but those figures have never been independently verified, and his fund has never been publicly audited.

    Nvidia and Palantir in the crosshairs

    Despite the uncertainty around his track record, Burry’s words still move markets. His recent bearish bets against Nvidia and Palantir have drawn particular attention, with Burry arguing that both sit at the center of an A.I.-driven market bubble.

    On Nov. 3, regulatory filings revealed that Scion had placed roughly $1.1 billion in bearish options positions tied to those companies. The structure of the trade—largely long-dated put options—gives him time for the thesis to play out rather than requiring an immediate downturn.

    “His timing was very good,” said Sosnoff. “He pretty much got short Nvidia near the top (around $200), and it’s now down 10 percent to 15 percent. It’s a good call.”

    Palantir, which represents Burry’s largest short at roughly $912 million, has not fallen as sharply. The stock is down about 7.8 percent from its Nov. 3 level. Still, because the position is structured with options expiring in 2027, some analysts say it’s far too early to judge.

    “His logic is extremely good, and he has over a year to be right,” David Trainer, CEO of A.I.-driven investment research firm New Constructs, told Observer.

    Trainer, a former hedge fund manager, also backed Burry’s broader critique of A.I. hyperscalers, arguing that companies such as Oracle and Microsoft are using aggressive accounting practices, particularly around GPU depreciation, to flatter earnings.

    “These companies are definitely using questionable billing and receivables to make their earnings look better,” said Trainer. “I can’t say if Burry has been right or wrong in previous trades, but I think he has made some money. “This time [with the A.I. Bubble], he seems right.”

    The cult of the contrarian

    Not everyone is convinced. Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management and a frequent contrarian himself, said Burry’s post-2008 track record is far less impressive than his reputation suggests.

    “When you look at the calls Burry has made since 2008, they have not been good,” he told Observer. “He has said ‘this is going to crash and that is going to crash’ many times since, and he hasn’t been right.”

    Still, big bearish bets tend to attract attention precisely because they go against the grain.

    “Any time someone makes a major down call, there’s a fascination with it as long [bullish] calls are always okay because the market always goes up,” said Tuttle.

    That dynamic helps explain why hedge fund stars can remain influential long after their best trades are behind them.

    “If I’m the main character in a movie and in a book like Burry and have been right in a big way, that buys me a lot of getting things wrong,” added Tuttle.

    The same dynamic applies to other market personalities such as Robert Kiyosaki, Peter Schiff and CNBC’s Jim Cramer, whose reputations often outlast their accuracy.

    “Robert Kiyosaki is constantly calling a bear market, and he is wrong, and Peter Schiff has been calling gold up for a long time,” said Tuttle. In Schiff’s case, it eventually worked—but more because of timing and luck than brilliance.

    “When you say gold is going to go up every year, and one year it does well, does that make you a genius? I would argue it doesn’t,” he added.

    Fame as financial fuel

    Wall Street is full of one-hit wonders whose early success grants them enduring influence.

    “Most of the time, they don’t risk their money,” said Sosnoff. “If they have one big win one year, they’re set. Their reputation is made.”

    John Paulson, who famously made $15 billion betting against subprime mortgages, fits that mold, as do figures like Ralph Acampora, who called the 1990s bull market, and Paul Tudor Jones, who predicted the 1987 crash.

    Other famous short sellers have stumbled. Jim Chanos, known for shorting Enron, closed his Kynikos fund in late 2023 after his Tesla bet went wrong. Bill Ackman lost roughly $1 billion betting against Herbalife in 2018, despite previously scoring a massive win betting against mortgage insurers during the financial crisis.

    Ultimately, fame often matters more than accuracy.

    “We live in a world where celebrities (movie, social media) have megaphones, and Michael is a celebrity because of the movie,” NYU Stern professor Aswath Damodaran told Observer. “Put simply, I will wager that most people who follow his advice (good or bad) are doing so because they liked the movie, think he is Christian Bale or like Batman, rather than because they read his treatises on Nvidia or Palantir. “

    That doesn’t mean Burry lacks insight. “Michael actually is a good macro thinker and often willing to break away from the herd,” Damodaran added. “But so are many other smart investors who never get noticed.”

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    Ivan Castano

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  • Zohran Mamdani’s Next Act

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    Photo: Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

    The secret fear of the loudest die-hard critics of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is not that he will fail as the city’s leader but that he has a very good chance of succeeding. If the new administration demonstrates it can deliver on its promise to lower the cost of living while managing our city efficiently and keeping the streets safe, it will become clear that the fearmongers who have been screaming warnings about a coming municipal apocalypse were peddling nonsense all along.

    We had nearly a year of discussion and debate before voters gave the go-head to Mamdani’s core four promises: freeze the rent, expand early education, make buses fast and free, and open one government-owned grocery store in each borough to help ease New York’s endemic hunger problem. “The residents of the city have spoken, and it’s been very clear, and they’ve done it in amazing numbers, and their response to the Mamdani campaign is that this has to happen,” Dean Fuleihan, a veteran government manager who will be Mamdani’s first deputy mayor, told me. “So I don’t see it as a question of choice.”

    Fuliehan also points out that naysayers have been wrong before. “You and I have actually witnessed many times when someone said or commented, ‘Can’t be done,’ and then three months later, it gets done,” he said. “I was part of [creating] universal pre-K with Mayor de Blasio, and everybody said it could not happen. Could not happen in the education department; it would take five years. The then-governor of New York said, ‘Impossible. Start with a pilot.’ And it happened in two years.”

    Fuliehan’s smooth confidence, the product of decades spent in state and local government, stands in contrast to the sky-is-falling prognostication of many New York leaders, who ought to know better. “If the city of New York is going socialist, I will definitely close, or sell, or move or franchise the Gristedes locations,” billionaire John Catsimatidis, the owner of the Gristedes chain, told Fox Business.

    That is an absurd overreaction to Mamdani’s proposal to open five government-owned grocery stores in so-called food deserts. An estimated 1.8 million New Yorkers already rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, including 40 percent of Bronx residents, and more than 500 soup kitchens and pantries around the city also try to fill the gap. Mamdani’s proposal to open one outlet in each borough – essentially, five more food pantries – will in no way affect the profits or losses of Castsimatidis’s 17 supermarkets.

    “I love New York. I will never move from New York, but there’s a lot of other people that will and are leaving New York,” Neil Blumenthal, the founder and CEO of the Warby Parker eyeglasses empire, told the Free Press. “Then there are others that will never even become New Yorkers because the cost of living is just too high. We’re one election away from becoming San Francisco.”

    Another worried rich man, billionaire Bill Ackman, who has made one laughably wrong call after another about New York politics this year, predicted before the election that “if Mamdani becomes the mayor of New York, you’re going to see the flight of businesses from New York. Most of the businesses that operate in New York City in the financial sector are incredibly portable.”

    Individual families or companies may pull up stakes, the way Ken Giffien moved the financial giant Citadel from Chicago to Miami and Elon Musk shifted Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas, but cases like these run counter to broader data showing that the rich, as a group, generally do not move around the country chasing low income-tax rates. An exhaustive 2016 study by researchers at Stanford University and the U.S. Treasury Department tracked the tax records and movements of every millionaire in America for 13 years and concluded, “Millionaires are not very mobile and actually have lower migration rates than the general population. This is in part because family responsibilities and business ownership are higher among top income-earners, which embeds individuals in their local regions.” More to the point, the study says, “their elite income itself embeds them in place: millionaires are not searching for economic opportunity — they have found it.”

    A similar study by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that 2,400 millionaire households moved out of New York during the pandemic years of 2020 to 2023 — but the state gained 17,500 millionaire households over the same period.  “High earners do not move in response to tax increases,” the study found. “Out-migration for those most impacted by recent effective tax increases (in 2017 and 2021) did not increase significantly in response to the tax increases.”

    And if we’re looking at particular cases, let’s not forget that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, just cut the ribbon on a new $4 billion headquarters on Park Avenue this year; Google opened a new $2.1 billion headquarters last year. They and other big-money firms are staying put because they know that the secret of New York’s trillion-dollar annual output is the army of young, talented professionals, artists, and scientists who grow up in our city or flock here from every corner of the globe. Mamdani has promised to help these folks find their footing in New York, whatever it takes.

    “The affordability crisis was top of mind for folks and challenged everyone else in the race to speak to that, and no one spoke to it as well as he did,” Mamdani’s campaign manager, Maya Handa, told me. “People are unhappy and people are angry, and they feel like the system has screwed them over, and [Mamdani showed] a willingness to really call that out in an honest and authentic way and really say we should not be afraid to tax the rich, we should not be afraid to redistribute some of that wealth so that people can live a life of dignity. I just think that message spoke to folks.”

    That blame-the-rich rhetoric has some elites worried. New York’s high-earning families, by and large, work hard, spend freely, and donate tons of money to charity. They aren’t used to being criticized by anybody, and certainly not by the activated army of pro-Mamdani young New Yorkers. But they should get used to it: If Mamdani succeeds, it will be more clear than ever that the city’s public- and private-sector leaders should have addressed New York’s affordability crisis long before now.

    Above all, says Morris Katz, a campaign strategist who served as a senior adviser to Mamdani, New Yorkers should stop listening to the doomsayers. “They’re the same people who said in April that he would never win a Democratic primary, the same people who said nine months before that, that he will never even be viable, the same people who said it would all crumble in a general election,” Katz told me. “Zohran demands a culture of excellence. He pursues excellence relentlessly. And it was that culture that took the campaign from polling at 1 percent to defeating and toppling a political dynasty. And I think it’s gonna be that same culture of excellence that delivers this agenda in City Hall. And it’s going to be some of those same people with egg on their face.”

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    Errol Louis

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  • MAGA Billionaire’s Favorite New School Does Not Have Teachers, Allows Kids to Earn Money

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    We recently learned about a network of AI-fueled private schools that teach students topics at breakneck speed while avoiding troublesome social or political ideas. The Alpha School, which prides itself on eschewing lessons on diversity, equity, and inclusion, has caught the eye of deep-pocketed folks like MAGA billionaire Bill Ackman. Now, new details about the academy have been shared by members of the school’s faculty.

    Alpha is quite different from most schools you’ve ever heard of: young K-12 students are taught subjects over the course of two hours using “AI-enabled software.” After that, the school says that the rest of the day is parsed out through a variety of physically and socially engaging activities, including workshops and business education exercises.

    Indeed, Alpha is so different from other schools that it doesn’t even have teachers. That’s according to Joe Liemandt, the principal of the school, who, during a recent podcast appearance, said that their institution doesn’t use the word “teachers” and prefers the term “guides.” These guides, or whatever they are, seem to be well remunerated, as Liemandt also revealed that pay for Alpha’s human staff starts at $100k. So, yes, they don’t exactly sound like any teachers I know.

    Another thing that distinguishes Alpha from a more traditional institution of learning is that kids can earn money in class. “Your kid can earn money by doing academics, so they can fund their passion projects,” Liemandt said during the podcast, noting that the funds can be used to “fund their passions, like flying somewhere to participate in a play or putting it into an investment fund,” Business Insider writes.

    You know how, when you’re six years old, all you really want to do is open an investment fund and drop some VC cash into your favorite unicorn? Well, now there’s a place that truly gives the kids what they want. Yes, it sure sounds like the next generation of cash-hungry little capitalists is being germinated with extreme enthusiasm. No wonder Ackman’s a fan.

    Gizmodo reached out to Alpha School and asked about its approach to teaching the humanities (i.e., subjects—like history and literature—that a software program might not be great at dealing with), but didn’t receive an immediate reply. As for Ackman, his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, previously declined to comment on the billionaire’s interest in the school, with a representative telling us: “We don’t have and [sic] additional color to provide at this time.”

    In addition to pimping for the futuristic new academy, Ackman has spent much of the last year pimping for Donald Trump. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he glowingly promoted his fellow billionaire as a political candidate. This enthusiasm waned a little bit, however, when, earlier this year, it became apparent that Trump’s tariff policies might tank much of the stock market. Amidst the darkest moments of Trump’s initial foray into a new economic system, Ackman warned that the policies were “in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.” Thankfully, when the market righted itself, Ackman saw the folly of his doubt and was welcomed back into the fold.

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    Lucas Ropek

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  • Alpha School Uses AI Teaching, Offers Staff Six-Figure Pay | Entrepreneur

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    A new network of schools is disrupting the status quo with AI-generated lessons, six-figure pay for teachers, and the approval of hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman.

    Alpha School is a nationwide private school network that uses AI to customize learning for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The typical Alpha School day consists of two hours of AI-generated academic learning for core subjects, followed by four hours of hands-on activities. The school claims that students learn twice as much as those following a standard system, per The Wall Street Journal. There is no homework, and parents receive daily data about how well their children are learning in school.

    Related: ‘Now Accepting Applications’: Elon Musk Is Opening a New Preschool in Texas Called Ad Astra. Here’s How to Apply.

    Ackman, who has a net worth of $8.28 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, posted about Alpha School on X last week, promoting the system and calling it a “truly breakthrough innovation.” He mentioned in his post that children in the Alpha school system “love school and have incredible outcomes.”

    The schools charge tuition between $40,000 and $75,000, depending on the location.

    The school was co-founded by MacKenzie Price, a Stanford graduate who created the two-hour learning model after her daughters told her that school was boring. Her vision was to create a way for students to pursue core academics in just two hours a day, leaving the rest of the time open to experiential learning.

    Teachers, who earn a minimum of $100,000, are referred to as “guides” because they “don’t do academic teaching,” Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt explained on an episode of the “Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy” podcast released on Tuesday. Instead of teachers outlining concepts on a board, students learn from devices assisted by AI.

    For example, a job opening for a high school guide at Alpha School in Austin, Texas, asks for an individual who can teach students “how to grow authentic social media followings” and “connect students with relevant influencers,” instead of someone with a teaching degree.

    Related: Y Combinator Helped Launch Reddit, Airbnb, and Dropbox. Here’s What I Learned From Its Free Startup School.

    Liemandt said on the podcast that Alpha School keeps students motivated by leaning into game-like lesson plans created by AI. For example, students can “unlock” afternoon activities, like a five-mile bike ride, by finishing their two hours of classwork.

    Students can also earn money by completing their coursework and use it to fund their interests, like investing. It’s unclear how much they can earn.

    “Your kid can earn money by doing academics, so they can fund their passion projects,” Liemandt said on the podcast.

    Alpha School is up and running in Texas, California, and Florida, with plans to launch schools in New York, Arizona, North Carolina, and Virginia later this year.

    A new network of schools is disrupting the status quo with AI-generated lessons, six-figure pay for teachers, and the approval of hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman.

    Alpha School is a nationwide private school network that uses AI to customize learning for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The typical Alpha School day consists of two hours of AI-generated academic learning for core subjects, followed by four hours of hands-on activities. The school claims that students learn twice as much as those following a standard system, per The Wall Street Journal. There is no homework, and parents receive daily data about how well their children are learning in school.

    Related: ‘Now Accepting Applications’: Elon Musk Is Opening a New Preschool in Texas Called Ad Astra. Here’s How to Apply.

    The rest of this article is locked.

    Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.

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    Sherin Shibu

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  • Bill Ackman’s US IPO Plan Solidifies His Shift Away From Traditional Hedge Funds

    Bill Ackman’s US IPO Plan Solidifies His Shift Away From Traditional Hedge Funds

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    Bill Ackman’s investment style has always been unique by hedge fund standards. Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for The New York Times

    Billionaire investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management is setting the stage for an initial public offering of its new U.S.-based fund focused on retail investors, the Wall Street Journal reported today (May 31). With around 80 percent of his assets under management already tied up in a publicly traded closed-end fund in Europe, this marks another milestone in Ackman’s breaking from being a traditional hedge fund manager.

    The new fund, called Pershing Square USA (PSUS), was announced in February via Ackman’s X account and a fund prospectus. Ackman’s dipping into U.S. retail investors could be him trying to take advantage of his growing media spotlight—the 58-year-old investor has 1.2 million followers on X and gained significant press for his $2.3 billion victory from betting on a 2020 market crash. The fund prospectus stated that Pershing Square’s “brand-name profile and broad retail following will drive substantial investor interest.”

    Hedge fund IPOs are rare though not unusual; Man Group and Blue Owl are two known alternative asset managers that are publicly traded. Ackman’s PSUS IPO would likely be the largest and most prominent IPO of its kind in many years.

    Ackman founded Pershing Square LP in 2004 as a traditional hedge fund, which took concentrated equity bets and charged close to an industry-standard “2 and 20” fee (2 percent management fee on assets under management and 20 percent on investment returns).

    However, in 2014, Ackman introduced a new investment vehicle called Pershing Square Holdings (PSH), a closed-end fund based in Guernsey (an island in the English channel that has become a popular place of incorporation for high net-worth funds) and publicly traded in Amsterdam and London. Unlike traditional hedge funds, investors cannot simply pull their money out from a closed-end fund and the fund charges “1.6 and 16” rather than the traditional “2 and 20.”

    PSH’s success has been less than ideal, though. This fund, which raised $3 billion in its 2014 IPO, has consistently traded at a discount to its net asset value, currently managing about $14.6 billion with a market value of approximately $9 billion. This means Pershing Square cannot raise more capital efficiently in the fund, as selling or issuing shares at a price lower than the net asset value would dilute shareholders.

    As PSH holds around 80 percent of the assets Ackman manages, this is especially stressful for the company’s future. A 2024 presentation revealed, “In 2023, we thoroughly examined the options for a U.S. listing to increase the number of investors who can own PSH.” Essentially, Pershing Square’s leadership felt that, if U.S. retail investors could buy PSH shares, which they are currently not allowed to do, they would give the company a higher valuation.

    PSUS is a reflection of that sentiment; it’s essentially a U.S. version of PSH. It begs the question of why Ackman sought to introduce PSH in European markets in the first place; Bloomberg’s finance columnist Matt Levine believes the answer is likely that the U.S. has stronger regulations on how publicly traded investment funds are allowed to use hedge fund strategies, such as leverage, derivatives and short-selling.

    All in all, this would be Ackman’s third IPO. He previously launched Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, the largest-ever SPAC that went public in July 2020 with the intention to acquire privately-held businesses. It liquidated and shut down two years later.

    With PSUS, Ackman is further solidifying himself as more of an asset manager, overseeing mostly publicly traded closed-end fund investments, than a typical hedge fund manager. Ackman has always been unique in his style: while traditional hedge funds, like Citadel or Millennium, have become renowned for making dozens of investments, quickly opening and closing out of positions, Ackman prefers to hold long-term activist positions on only a handful of companies.

    Bill Ackman’s US IPO Plan Solidifies His Shift Away From Traditional Hedge Funds

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    Shreyas Sinha

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  • Bill Ackman Claims Martin Luther King Jr. Would Have Been Against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—And Yes, He Was Serious

    Bill Ackman Claims Martin Luther King Jr. Would Have Been Against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—And Yes, He Was Serious

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    Billionaire Bill Ackman, who’s been in the news a lot of late thanks to his quest to oust former Harvard president Claudine Gay, spent part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in a conversation on X with Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips and X owner Elon Musk. The big takeaway from that chat? That Ackman believes King—who was, quite famously, against racism—would have hated diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that have been implemented in schools and businesses.

    Yes, according to the hedge fund manager, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is “precisely about a world where people will be judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. And when I came to learn about the DEI movement, which is an ideological movement, it’s really the reverse of that…I think Dr. King would be very opposed to this sort of ideology, even though you know, diversity is a good thing, even though of course, a culture where everyone feels comfortable and included is critically important.”

    Ackman—who claimed earlier this month that DEI initiatives are “racist,” that he’s worried about “reverse racism,” and that DEI is “a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard, but the educational system at large” and must be stopped—is of course not the first person to cherry-pick a single line from King’s most famous speech and argue that it is proof the civil rights leader was calling for color blindness. In fact, King’s words are regularly co-opted by the right* to do exactly that.

    Earlier this month, then GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy tried to argue that King would not have approved of critical race theory or DEI efforts. In 2021, while promoting Florida’s Stop Woke Act, which prohibits public schools and businesses from discussing race and racism in a way certain white people don’t like, Ron DeSantis boldly suggested MLK Jr. would be all for it, saying, “You think about what MLK stood for. He said he didn’t want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. You listen to some of these people nowadays, they don’t talk about that.” The same year, then GOP lawmaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted, in all seriousness, “Critical Race Theory goes against everything Martin Luther King Jr. taught us.”

    Unfortunately for the individuals invoking King’s words to fit their worldview, his own daughter has said he would absolutely not be on their side. “People using ‘not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character’ to deter discussion of, teaching about, and protest against racism are not students of the comprehensive #MLK,” Bernice King wrote on X just a few months ago. “My father’s dream and work included eradicating racism, not ignoring it.” As Reverend William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign told Axios, King “said to us that we must address fully systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, and militarism. It’s dishonoring of the memory of King not to raise that full critique, no matter how unnerving, unsettling or uncomfortable it is.” And, in a revelation that those committed to the “MLK Jr. would have been against DEI initiatives” bit will very much not be pleased to hear, reporter Judd Legum noted on Monday that in 1965, King was asked if he supported “a multibillion-dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro.” He responded: “I do indeed.”

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    *Ackman has historically supported Democrats but said last week he no longer wants to associate with the party. He also said Saturday he would give $1 million to a political action committee supporting Democratic primary hopeful Dean Phillips.

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    Bess Levin

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  • Business Insider Stands By Plagiarism Accusation Against Billionaire’s Wife

    Business Insider Stands By Plagiarism Accusation Against Billionaire’s Wife

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Business Insider’s top executive and parent company said Sunday they were satisfied with the fairness and accuracy of stories that made plagiarism accusations against a former MIT professor who is married to a prominent critic of former Harvard President Claudine Gay.

    “We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” said a spokesman for Axel Springer, the German media company that owns the publication.

    The company had said it would look into the stories about Neri Oxman, a prominent designer, following complaints by her husband, Bill Ackman, a Harvard graduate and CEO of the Pershing Square investment firm. He publicly campaigned against Gay, who resigned earlier this month following criticism of her answers at a congressional hearing on antisemitism and charges that her academic writing contained examples of improperly credited work.

    With its stories, Business Insider raised both the idea of hypocrisy and the possibility that academic dishonesty is widespread, even among the nation’s most prominent scholars.

    Ackman’s response, and the pressure that a well-connected person placed on the corporate owners of a journalism outlet, raised questions about the outlet’s independence.

    Business Insider and Axel Springer’s “liability just goes up and up and up,” Ackman said Sunday in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “This is what they consider fair, accurate and well-documented reporting with appropriate timing. Incredible.”

    Business Insider’s first article, on Jan. 4, noted that Ackman had seized on revelations about Gay’s work to back his efforts against her — but that the organization’s journalists “found a similar pattern of plagiarism” by Oxman. A second piece, published the next day, said Oxman had stolen sentences and paragraphs from Wikipedia, fellow scholars and technical documents in a 2010 doctoral dissertation at M.I.T.

    Ackman complained that it was a low blow to attack someone’s family in such a manner and said Business Insider reporters gave him less than two hours to respond to the accusations. He suggested an editor there was an anti-Zionist. Oxman was born in Israel.

    The business leader reached out in protest to board members at both Business Insider and Axel Springer. That led to Axel Springer telling The New York Times that questions had been raised about the motivation behind the articles and the reporting process, and the company promised to conduct a review.

    On Sunday, Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng issued a statement saying “there was no unfair bias or personal, political and/or religious motivation in pursuit of the story.”

    Peng said the stories were newsworthy and that Oxman, with a public profile as a prominent intellectual, was fair game as a subject. The stories were “accurate and the facts well-documented,” Peng said.

    “Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence,” Peng wrote.

    Business Insider would not say who conducted the review of its work.

    Ackman said his wife admitted to four missing quotation marks and one missed footnote in a 330-page dissertation. He said the articles could have “literally killed” his wife if not for the support of her family and friends.

    “She has suffered severe emotional harm,” he wrote on X, “and as an introvert, it has been very, very difficult for her to make it through each day.”

    For her part, Gay wrote in the Times that those who campaigned to have her ousted “often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned arguments.” Harvard’s first Black president said she was the subject of death threats and had “been called the N-word more times than I care to count.”

    There was no immediate comment Sunday from Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider’s global editor in chief. In a memo to his staff last weekend that was reported by The Washington Post, Carlson said he made the call to publish both of the stories and that he knew the process of preparing them was sound.

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  • Wife of Billionaire Who Pushed for Harvard President’s Ouster Apologizes for Plagiarism in Dissertation

    Wife of Billionaire Who Pushed for Harvard President’s Ouster Apologizes for Plagiarism in Dissertation

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    Neri Oxman, an architect and former MIT professor, as well as the wife of billionaire Bill Ackman, apologized Thursday for multiple instances of plagiarism in her 2010 dissertation that were reported by Business Insider.

    In the article, reporters Katherine Long and Jack Newsham wrote that Oxman had cited two authors, but did not use quotation marks around material plagiarized from their paper, and paraphrased a book without including a citation. In a post on X, responding to the story, Oxman wrote: “I regret and apologize for these errors.”

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    Oxman’s husband, Ackman, has recently been in the news, regarding academia, over his push to oust former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned from her post earlier this week. Ackman had called for Gay to be fired over her response to antisemitism at the university, and instances of plagiarism that had surfaced over the last several months. (In December, Harvard said Gay had requested corrections on two of her papers and would be updating her dissertation in several spots.) He has since called for members of Harvard’s governing board to step down.

    In response to the Business Insider article, and Oxman’s apology, Ackman wrote: “You know that you struck a chord when they go after your wife, in this case my love and partner in life, @NeriOxman. I am one of the most fortunate people in the universe in large part because of Neri. Please see her post below about today’s Business Insider piece about her dissertation. Part of what makes her human is that she makes mistakes, owns them, and apologizes when appropriate.”

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  • In billionaires’ brawl over DEI, Bill Ackman knocks Mark Cuban’s rebuttal to Elon Musk: ‘I fell for the same trap’ 

    In billionaires’ brawl over DEI, Bill Ackman knocks Mark Cuban’s rebuttal to Elon Musk: ‘I fell for the same trap’ 

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    Billionaires are duking it out on X over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

    On Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, wrote: “DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.”

    That was in support of a long post by hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman on the reasons he pressured Harvard president Claudine Gay to resign, as she announced she would earlier this week. Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, is a Harvard alum and prominent donor to the university. 

    Gay received intense criticism last month for her answers to lawmakers over anti-Semitism on campus following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. Specifically, she failed to condemn calls for genocide against Jews as a violation of university policy. That was followed by allegations by conservative activists that she had committed plagiarism in her academic work, and suggestions that she had been unqualified for the role of president, which she assumed last July, in the first place.

    “It was a thinly veiled exercise in race & gender when they selected Claudine Gay,” entrepreneur and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a Harvard alum, posted to X on Tuesday. “Here’s a radical idea for the future: select leadership based on *merit.*”

    When an X user responded to Musk by questioning whether DEI qualifies as racism, Musk countered: “Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism.” 

    At this point, another billionaire weighed in: Mark Cuban, the Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner (last month he sold his majority stake in the NBA team to families linked to Sheldon Adelson, the late Las Vegas casino magnate). 

    “Let me help you out and give you my thoughts on DEI,” he responded to Musk. 

    “Good businesses look where others don’t, to find the employees that will put your business in the best possible position to succeed,” he continued. “You may not agree, but I take it as a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation, etc., that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration. By extending our hiring search to include them, we can find people that are more qualified. The loss of DEI-phobic companies is my gain.”

    Ackman responded to Cuban, writing: 

    “That’s exactly what I thought until I did the work. I encourage you to do the same and revert. DEI is not about diversity, equity, or inclusion. Trust me. I fell for the same trap you did.”

    Musk replied to Ackman with “Yup.” 

    Musk, who owns X, has been a frequent critic of DEI in recent weeks. In mid-December, he wrote: “‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms. This is just as morally wrong as any other racism and sexism. Changing the target class doesn’t make it right!”

    (The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Tesla in September alleging it failed to probe complaints of racist conduct and has fired or retaliated against employees who reported harassment. In other such cases, Tesla has said that it doesn’t tolerate discrimination and takes such complaints seriously.)

    Ackman, in a similar vein, wrote on Wednesday: “DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out).”

    In her resignation note, Gay wrote, “It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

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  • JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon wants Americans on both sides of the political fence to unite to keep Trump out of office—but warns against sneering at MAGA supporters

    JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon wants Americans on both sides of the political fence to unite to keep Trump out of office—but warns against sneering at MAGA supporters

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    America has failed its least wealthy citizens—and “insulting” those with opposing political views isn’t going to make things better, according to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

    Speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday, the Wall Street veteran called on people of all ideological views to do what they can to prevent another Donald Trump presidency.

    “If you’re a very liberal Democrat, I urge you: help Nikki Haley,” he said. “Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump.”

    Asked whether he believed the best outcome for the election was “anyone but Trump,” Dimon responded: “I would never say that.”

    “He might be the president, I have to deal with that too,” he joked—but he noted that he didn’t mind criticizing whoever ends up in the Oval Office.

    Stop slamming MAGA movement, Dimon says

    While he made it clear he wasn’t the biggest fan of Trump returning to office, Dimon urged Americans on Wednesday to put aside some of their ideological differences and look for the nuance in others’ political beliefs.

    “We should stop talking about ultra-MAGA,” he insisted. “I think you’re insulting a large group of people, and making this assumption, scapegoating—which the press is pretty good at too—that these people believe in Trump’s family values and are supporting the personal person. I don’t think that’s true.”

    A lot of the support for Trump’s so-called MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) campaign, Dimon argued, came from specific things he had called out or achieved during his presidency.

    “I think what [supporters are] looking at is the economy was pretty good—the Black community had the lowest unemployment rate ever in his last year,” he said. “He wasn’t wrong about China. He wasn’t wrong about NATO. He was wrong about the misuse of the military. So that’s why—they’re looking at that.”

    He called on people to do what they can to consider why people take opposing views. For Democrats, he suggested reading the work of conservative columnist George Will, while he said Republicans ought to look up the work of Pulitzer winning columnist Thomas Friedman.

    “We should get out of this [idea that] it’s one way or the other,” he said. “I’m not mad at people who are anti-abortion. If you believe in God and that conception starts at the moment of birth, you are not a bad person. I think people need to stop denigrating each other all the time because people take a point of view that is slightly different than yours. We’re a democracy—people should vote and solve some of these issues, and they won’t always be what you want.”

    ‘What the hell have we done?’

    While there has been some speculation that Dimon himself may some day run for office, he’s denied having any political ambitions for now.

    However, he made it clear on Wednesday what he would have done differently to former president Trump or incumbent candidate Joe Biden.

    “We’ve done a terrible job taking care of our bottom 30% of earners,” he said, telling the audience: “You all are wealthy and have money, but their average, their average wages are [low].”

    “They’re the ones who lost their job in COVID,” he added. “They’re the ones who are dying five or six years younger than the rest of us. They’re the ones who don’t have medical insurance. They’re the ones whose schools don’t work, and they’re the ones dealing with crime. What the hell have we done as a nation?”

    Insisting that “we need to fix it,” the JPMorgan chief said the U.S. needed better immigration, education and infrastructure policies—and he pledged to do what he could to help make that a reality.

    “Whoever’s president, I’m going to try to help do the best job possible,” he said, before sharing an anecdote about his wife and daughters criticizing him for going to the White House years ago to meet with then-president Trump.

    “I will walk into that oval office trying to help whoever is the president of the United States to do a better job for our people,” he added. “I don’t agree with a lot of things [Trump] does… [but] I couldn’t imagine saying ‘I’m not going to go into the White House because of who’s there.’”

    Tax the rich, help the poor

    During the DealBook Summit talks, Business Insider reported that Dimon was also asked by audience member and billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman—who once urged the JPMorgan CEO to run for president—what he would hypothetically do if he were to be elected president of the United States.

    He said he would start by building a cabinet of “really smart, talented brainy people” that included both Republicans and Democrats, before tackling education, immigration and “doubling down on diplomacy.”

    Dimon—who has a personal net worth of $1.8 billion, according to Forbes—also said presidents should have an economic growth strategy that included “proper taxation” policies, adding that he would double the earned income tax credit for low earners “tomorrow.”

    “I’d make people like you pay a little bit more,” he also told Ackman. “This carried interest stuff would be gone the day I got in office because it is unfair.”

    The carried interest loophole—which Ackman has previously slammed as a “stain on the tax code”—allows private equity and hedge fund managers to lower their tax bill on profits from fund investments.

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  • Billionaire investor Bill Ackman urges Harvard suspensions to tackle ‘dire’ antisemitism on campus that’s ‘much worse’ than he realized

    Billionaire investor Bill Ackman urges Harvard suspensions to tackle ‘dire’ antisemitism on campus that’s ‘much worse’ than he realized

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    Harvard alumnus and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman called on university president Claudine Gay to take immediate steps to reduce antisemitism on campus, a situation he called “dire” after meeting with students and faculty last week.

    “Four weeks after the barbaric terrorist acts of October 7th, I have lost confidence that you and the university will do what is required,” Ackman wrote, describing the Cambridge campus as a place where Jewish students are concerned about the threat of physical violence against them.

    A Harvard spokesperson pointed to the university’s prior comments over campus safety and community conduct but declined to directly address Ackman’s letter.

    Tensions on campuses, including Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, have surged since Hamas breached Israel’s border last month, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages. Demonstrations have regularly been held against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which has led to the deaths of almost 9,500 people, according to the Gaza health ministry run by Hamas.

    Antisemitic incidents including assaults, harassment and vandalism soared 400% across the US since Oct. 7, with 54 incidents reported on campuses, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

    The protests have divided campuses over the limits of free speech and strained relations among students, faculty, alumni and donors. At Penn, alumnus Marc Rowan has called for its leaders to resign amid charges they’ve tolerated antisemitism on campus.

    The reputational damage to Harvard, the oldest US college, began hours after the attack by Hamas, when more than 30 Harvard student groups posted a letter placing the responsibility solely on Israel. Hamas is deemed a terrorist organization by the US and European Union.

    Former university president Larry Summers slammed the institution’s failure to condemn the groups.

    Ackman, founder of investment firm Pershing Square Capital Management and a frequent contributor to social media, suggested that there should be employment consequences for those that signed the letter.

    The threat of consequences to students for antisemitic actions became evident Thursday when a group of prominent law firms sent letters to the deans of more than 100 law schools, including Harvard, telling them to take an “unequivocal stance” against antisemitic harassment on their campuses. The firms, which include Sullivan & Cromwell and Cravath, Swain & Moore LLP, grew quickly from two dozen to more than 100.

    Gay, who began the job as Harvard’s president on July 1, has issued multiple messages condemning the attacks and last week appointed a group of advisers to work with Harvard leadership on combating antisemitism. In an Oct. 27 speech at Harvard’s Hillel, she said she acknowledged grief, fear and anger among Jewish students and faculty.

    But in his letter on X dated Nov. 4, Ackman was dismissive of her efforts and described the situation as “much worse” than he realized.

    “Jewish students are being bullied, physically intimidated, spat on, and in several widely-disseminated videos of one such incident, physically assaulted.”

    Ackman urged the immediate suspension of those involved in “harassing and allegedly physically assaulting” the student on Oct. 18, as well as disciplinary action against students who post antisemitic content on Slack message boards.

    Ackman also took issue with students chanting ““Intifada! Intifada! Intifada! From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free!”

    The phrase has been widely interpreted as calling for the expulsion of Jews from Israel and the dismantling of the Jewish state.

    Ackman charged that inaction by Harvard in confronting the problem created by a small group of students and faculty has “emboldened this antisemitic subset of the community to escalate their antisemitic actions.”

    “As Harvard’s leader, your words and actions are followed closely,” Ackman wrote. “As a result, the steps you take to address antisemitism at Harvard will be recognized around the world, and can contribute greatly as an example to other institutions seeking to eliminate antisemitism in all of its forms.”

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  • Bill Ackman explains why he embraced RFK Jr.’s skepticism on Covid vaccines

    Bill Ackman explains why he embraced RFK Jr.’s skepticism on Covid vaccines

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    Bill Ackman

    Scott Mlyn | CNBC

    Bill Ackman said in 2021 that delaying Covid vaccinations for older Americans “seems like genocide.”

    Today, the influential hedge fund chief and investor is amplifying the debunked anti-vaccine views of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    Ackman is not denying his change. In fact, he said Kennedy is asking “important questions” about vaccines, raising issues he is interested in learning more about.

    Several of Ackman’s recent tweets about Covid vaccines have stunned and confounded many of his colleagues on Wall Street, according to several people who have known and been allied with him for years. And it’s led both his allies and foes to ask the same question: Why is he doing this?

    Ackman answered that question in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.

    “I listened to RFK on several podcasts and a town hall and thought he raised important issues about vaccines and other issues that were worth learning more about,” said Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square Capital. “I don’t feel like we’ve fully answered questions about the safety of all vaccines, particularly more recently approved vaccines, and our approach to determining their safety and efficacy.” 

    Although the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines has declined over time as the virus has evolved into new variants, public health officials say the shots are a critical tool in preventing hospitalization and death from the virus, particularly among the elderly and people with pre-existing medical conditions. Serious side effects are rare. The CDC and FDA closely watch vaccine safety though large monitoring systems, and regularly discuss any issues at public advisory committee meetings.

    Ackman, a billionaire whose commentary can move markets, is the latest high profile executive to show support for Kennedy and his opinions. 

    Wall Street veteran Omeed Malik is hosting a campaign fundraiser for Kennedy later this month in the Hamptons. Venture capitalist David Sacks and fellow tech leader Chamath Palihapitiya hosted a fundraiser for Kennedy in June, which raised approximately $500,000 for Kennedy’s campaign. Ackman would not say whether he planned to donate to Kennedy’s campaign for president.

    Ackman’s new stance on vaccines marks a dramatic shift for the investor. In 2021, he said the U.S. should “launch mass vaccinations” of the elderly. He reaped large profits during the peak of the Covid pandemic, by selling his bets against the market, just days after warning on CNBC that “hell is coming” and imploring the Trump White House to shut down the country for a month. Ackman, in a March 26 letter to investors, called the idea that his comments moved the market “absurd.” “Beginning on March 12th, we began unwinding our hedge, and continued to do so every day thereafter until we completed our exit on the morning of March 23rd,” he wrote.

    Ackman told CNBC his newfound worries about vaccines come from being a parent and a concerned citizen. He said Kennedy, in his view, is asking “important questions” about them. “Unfortunately, vaccines are not safety tested,” Kennedy said at a town hall late last month.

    Scientific researchers and medical officials have emphatically rejected Kennedy’s stances on vaccines, including his earlier argument that vaccines can lead to autism.

    Ackman has pushed his newfound skepticism to his approximately 740,000 followers while saying he is not opposed to vaccines. He has also taken on a doctor who is known for pushing back on misinformation related to Covid.

    “@RobertKennedyJr and others have raised important questions about the safety of some vaccines and have sought explanations for the dramatic increases in the incidence of childhood allergies, autism, and other health issues. These are good questions that have not been adequately answered,” Ackman said in a tweet last month that quoted a video of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson arguing that Kennedy is getting the better of President Joe Biden in the early days of the Democratic primary campaign.

    Biden enjoys a substantial lead in Democratic primary polls, although Kennedy is pulling double-digit support.

    When asked if he believes whether Kennedy should be president, Ackman said: “I don’t yet know, but I think he is asking important questions and raising interesting issues that are worthy of discussion and debate.”

    Ackman, who has backed Democrats in the past, also wouldn’t say whether he will back Biden.

    “It depends on the alternatives at the time of the general election,” Ackman said. “My strong preference is that he announces now that he won’t run to create a more open field for other candidates.”

    Wall Street execs question Ackman

    Ackman’s peers are discussing the matter more and more through text messages and private conversations, according to one of his allies. Ackman is known among investors as a meticulous, yet contrarian, thinker.

    “I’m not surprised at all because the guy has a contrarian streak to him,” a Wall Street ally of Ackman’s told CNBC regarding the investor’s recent tweets. “When he believes something, he’s not shy to stand by it.”

    Ackman has waded into politics before, including through campaign contributions. 

    He’s supported Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., an outside group that backed former Citigroup executive and Democratic New York mayoral candidate Ray McGuire, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic former candidate for president Pete Buttigieg, and Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney’s 2022 failed run for reelection, according to data from nonpartisan campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets. 

    But none of those donations came across as surprising on Wall Street, unlike his recent tweets.

    Some say Ackman could be positioning himself to have more influence in politics, including possibly running for office one day. Ackman said in a recent tweet that he planned to meet with Schumer this week to discuss his idea of how to fix the college student debt problem after the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s relief plan.

    Ackman denied having any plans to run for office and declined to comment about the Schumer meeting.

    Others say he could be trying to align himself with outspoken business leaders who are more conservative and have been echoing similar takes, such as Sacks and Twitter owner Elon Musk. Sacks and Musk have both expressed support for Kennedy and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.

    Many of those familiar with Ackman – allies and rivals alike – talked to CNBC on the condition of anonymity in order to openly speak about their stances on why they believe he has suddenly trained his contrarianism on issues like vaccines and Russia.

    Carl Icahn, the veteran activist investor and a longtime adversary of Ackman’s, told CNBC in a phone interview that he believes the Pershing Square CEO’s tweets are yet another example of how wrong Ackman can be.

    “His tweeting might be a positive. Since I’ve known him, he’s almost never been correct about anything he’s said. Therefore if one reads his tweets, and does the opposite, you’re almost sure to be correct and very possibly make a large profit,” Icahn said.

    “He makes large bets and like the riverboat gambler, he does win sometimes but often loses hugely. Just look at the billions he’s lost in Herbalife and Valeant. Most riverboat gamblers die broke,” Icahn said. “The only difference between him and a riverboat gambler is not only he’s losing his own money, unfortunately he’s losing a lot of other people’s money, too.”

    Ackman declined to comment on Icahn’s remarks.

    Institutional Investor reported Ackman broke a three-year winning streak in 2022, registering his first down year since 2018. Pershing Square Holdings fell more than 8% for the year, according to the publication.

    Ackman’s recent tweets have turned heads beyond Wall Street, too. Alexander Reid Ross, a disinformation expert who lectures at Portland State University in Oregon, told CNBC that it appears Ackman is going back and forth on different conspiracies – and getting things wrong.

    Reid Ross pointed to Ackman’s latest tweets pertaining to the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion in Russia.

    “Ackman’s profile seems to veer wildly and be attracted to statements that may seem interesting and extreme but end up wrong. For instance, on the latest Wagner rebellion, he shares one person saying in effect ‘either [Vladimir] Putin kills Prigo [Yevgeny Prigozhin] or Moscow falls,’ and in another case he supports the nation that Putin made the whole thing up,” Reid Ross said. “This is veering wildly from one false assumption to the next one, both of which being mutually exclusive.”

    Ackman and Covid

    As he apparently defended Kennedy’s broadly debunked and criticized stances on vaccines, Ackman also injected himself into a Twitter battle involving Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, who has pushed back on misinformation related to the coronavirus and vaccines. 

    Podcast host Joe Rogan initially pushed the idea of having Hotez and Kennedy debate. Rogan, who has made his popular show a platform for celebrities as well as conspiracy theorists, offered to give $100,000 to a charity if the doctor was willing to come on his show to debate Kennedy. Ackman later said he would “add $150,000 to @joerogan’s wager so now $250,000 can go to charity and the public can hear an open debate on an important topic.”

    Musk chimed in and said “Maybe @PeterHotez just hates charity.” Hotez refused to debate Kennedy but did say he was willing to go on Rogan’s show to discuss his own position on vaccines. He later said on Twitter that “a couple of antivaxers” showed up at his private residence in Texas “taunting” him to debate Kennedy.

    At first, Ackman encouraged a debate between Kennedy and Hotez. Later, he walked back the idea and criticized the doctor, who says on his website that he worked in the “development of coronavirus vaccines including vaccines administered to over 100 million people in India and Indonesia.”

    “Based on my further research Hotez does not appear to be a credible advocate for vaccine policy in light of the repeated inaccuracies of his public statements during the crisis and potential conflicts he may have,” Ackman tweeted to his more than 700,000 followers on June 19.

    Hotez responded to Ackman on Twitter the next day.

    “Awful to read Mr. Ackman’s account of my activities. I have no pharma conflicts, I co-developed low-cost patent-free Covid vaccines for global health reaching 100 million doses. I never took a cent for any cable news/podcast/radio appearances,” Hotez said.

    “And you have the audacity to present phony conspiracy websites that monetize the internet as your evidence?”

    — CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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  • There are limited options to fix the banking crisis, but one is gaining support

    There are limited options to fix the banking crisis, but one is gaining support

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  • Bill Ackman denies defending Sam Bankman-Fried, says FTX fiasco ‘egregious’ case of ‘gross negligence’ at a minimum

    Bill Ackman denies defending Sam Bankman-Fried, says FTX fiasco ‘egregious’ case of ‘gross negligence’ at a minimum

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    Bill Ackman said Saturday that his recent comments on Sam Bankman-Fried were misinterpreted. 

    Ackman, founder and chief executive officer of Pershing Square Capital Management LP, faced criticism after he tweeted on Nov. 30 that he believed SBF, as the founder of crypto exchange FTX is known, was telling the truth at the New York Times Dealbook Summit. Bankman-Fried denied trying to perpetrate a fraud, while acknowledging many errors at the helm of the company. 

    FTX imploded last month after the exchange revealed an $8 billion hole in its balance sheet, fueling questions about whether it mishandled customer funds. Since then Bankman-Fried has embarked on an apology tour, accepting that his company broke its own rules but denying fraud. 

    Ackman said Saturday that the collapse of FTX is “at a minimum, the most egregious, large-scale case of business gross negligence that I have observed in my career.” Still, the hedge fund manager said Bankman-Fried could have “civil rather than criminal liability” if he has told the truth.  

    Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter will examine how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of today’s executives—and how they can best navigate those challenges. Subscribe here.

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    Susanne Barton, Bloomberg

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  • Bill Ackman doubts Fed can tame prices: ‘We’ll have to ultimately accept a higher level of inflation’

    Bill Ackman doubts Fed can tame prices: ‘We’ll have to ultimately accept a higher level of inflation’

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