#100 Bill Ackman On Activist Investing, The Economy, And Learning From Mistakes

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman (@BillAckman), CEO of Pershing Square Capital, joins Julia La Roche on episode 100 for an exclusive and wide-ranging conversation. In this episode, Ackman revisits the various eras of his investing career, from his first stock purchase as a Harvard Business School student to his bet against MBIA and his activist stake in Wendy’s. He also discusses his transition to a “quieter” phase of activist investing and his foray into tech investing with the recent addition of Google's parent company, Alphabet. Along the way, Ackman shares lessons and insights on a range of topics, including raising capital in the face of rejection, learning from mistakes, and the importance of optimism and free speech. Ackman also provides an update on the macroeconomic outlook, shares his thoughts on the 2024 presidential election, discusses the recent regional banking crisis, and more.

0:00 Welcome Bill Ackman to the show 

0:25 A ‘self study’ in investing 

1:30 The first stock Ackman purchased 

4:00 Raising capital like ‘blind dating’ 

5:45 Willingness to go against ‘the system’ 

8:30 Origins of Ackman’s persistence 

9:20 Incentives drive human behavior

11:30 Learning from mistakes/failure 

12:50 Optimism 

15:05 Why Ackman/Pershing Square survived the challenging years  

17:50 Codifying the eight principles in stone 

19:30 Three eras of Pershing Square

26:30 Rise of passive/indexing

31:10 Twitter/ free speech 

34:10 Macro assessment 

35:30 Longer-term risks to the economy 

37:45 2024 election 

39:40 Would Ackman ever run for office? 

41:10 Regional banks 

43:00 Buying Google/ impact of AI 

48:06 $600 million to philanthropy 

50:30 Parenting