Bill Ackman Quotes
108 Bill Ackman Quotes
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[In August 2013.] What my strategy is… what we do is use the public spotlight to ultimately put pressure on companies to do the right thing. And as a director I’ve never before released a public letter to the press… in the board room I’m active. Outside the board room I’m very quiet about what happens in companies.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I want to be the champion of shareholder - you know I’m a representative of the shareholders. I want to be a champion of the company and the shareholders. And when I’m concerned about the direction of the business I’m not afraid to air those concerns. I’m a very straightforward person. I say precisely what I think. Sometimes it rubs people the wrong way.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I don’t control
Carl Icahn… Most of this comes from a battle I’m having with Herbalife. In the case of Herbalife I’m not a shareholder pushing to make a business more valuable. I’m an investor who has made a bet that the business will fail.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013 on Herbalife.] We short the stock and what we are doing is we believe that Herbalife is operating a pyramid scheme… We believe that they are transferring wealth from a very large number of low-income, principally Hispanic individuals in this country and around the globe to a handful of wealthy people.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] What we do is we take large, concentrated positions, generally very well-known companies and we work with them for years. We took a stake in general growth in the middle of the financial crisis… The stock at the time was 34 cents. We actually have worked with the board and convinced them to put the company into bankruptcy, which is kind of an unusual thing. We helped the company restructure its debts, we brought in new management, we recruited the new board of members, I stepped off the board, we span off the subsidiary called the Howard Hughes Corporation. That little 34-cents stock today is worth $34 about five years after we made the investment and the shareholders have made 100 times their money. Now there aren’t a lot of people upset with me about that particular situation because everyone wins. The problem with shorting stocks is that there are going to be some large number of people who own the stock who are not going to be happy and that the CEO of the company is not going to be happy with you.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] We don’t go out to destroy companies. What we do - we short very few stocks. This is the second large short I’ve made in 10 years. The last one… We shorted a company called MBIA. MBIA had a AAA rating from the credit rating… It guaranteed mortgages and other kinds of financial obligations and was creating a lot of risk in the financial system. And we shorted the stock and we disclosed publicly our concerns about the company’s balance sheet and the risk it was creating for the capital markets. So the benefit of short sellers to the markets is they’re sort of the canary in the coal mine. You know, they are the early warning signal about a problem in the business, a problem in the capital markets… You know we probably spent millions of dollars doing research on Herbalife, research that you know the government, frankly, on a speculative basis probably wouldn’t do on a company like this.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] Pyramid schemes don’t care particularly much about the quality of the product they’re selling to people and the product they sell is a product that people consume.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I think you know short sellers are often viewed as the villains of the... capital markets but I think that if actually the SEC followed around the Jim Chanoses of the world… that would be a much more efficient way to… get rid of fraud.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013 on why the Herbalife stock was going up.] Simply because
Carl Icahn and others have been promoting it. That’s why.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] Ultimately, investors are - are only as good as their track records. If you were to look at our track records over the last 10 years, we have one of the best track records in the investment business, bar none…
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] In MBIA… we were short for seven years before the stock went from $73 to $3.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] There’s a famous expression - in the short term the market is a - is a voting machine. People vote one way or another… Long term it’s a weighing machine… Weighing is much more precise.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013 on shorting MBIA.] That was one of the best investments we ever made… $30 million became whatever $1 billion and a $1.5 billion.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] If you look at every investment we’ve made since the beginning of time, active investments we made 26. 23 of the 26, I think, are best described as home runs. And I could walk through each of them, if you’d like. Every investor made a fortune.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] Investing is not a business where every investment is profitable.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I would argue that our batting average is extremely high.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] Railroad business is one of the great businesses of the world… first of all, they’re not going to build a new one right? If you own the second largest railroad in Canada… That’s Canadian Pacific. You know it’s an asset that was created 150 or 60 years ago… the replacement cost of the railroad is you know, hundreds of billions of dollars. [On rail being cheaper to ship than by plane.] It’s more efficient.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] As long as I’m operating honestly, ethically and doing the right thing, I feel very good about what I do.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] Retail is a difficult business. I think that Eddie [
Lampert] is not a trained retailer. I’m sure he’s learned a lot.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] Pretty much everything we’ve ever owned, with the exception of Borders, has a higher value today than it did after we sold it which means that the impact that we’ve had on the business has been positive.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I’m also an executive officer of a business, chairman of the board of a company called Howard Hughes… This is a business that I created, it’s the business I created by taking 34 assets outside of General Growth, sticking them into a new company, recruiting a management team. Building a board of directors and this company is doing marvelous things.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I don’t think anyone would ever accuse us of weakening a business.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I don’t need more money. I’m not motivated by financial returns. I’m motivated by I want to have a great track record… I’m 20 years in, but the record’s been good so far. I’d like to have one of the best track records.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I think good, private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy.
Bill Ackman
[In August 2013.] I would do what I do now, even if I weren’t compensated for doing it because I think it’s a way for me to make the biggest contribution that I can make.
Bill Ackman
[In November 2013.] We’re a very concentrated investor.
Bill Ackman
[In November 2013.] Ultimately the fundamentals will determine the outcome…
Bill Ackman
[In May 2008.] We focus on things we can understand.
Bill Ackman
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