About William A Ackman and Pershing Square Capital Management LP
After my recent post about Pershing Square's moves at Target Corporation, I thought it would be interesting to find out more about William A Ackman.
There are a million and one different sources of information on billionaires like Warren Buffet and Kirk Kerkorian, but there seems to be little consolidated information on the younger generation of powerful investors.
All of this information was gathered using google. If you have better links, corrections, or more detailed information please post a response and I will make changes to this post.
Short bio of William Albert Ackman:
Year of birth: 1966
Current age: 41
Father Lawrence D. Ackman, president Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group LLC (formerly Ackman Brothers & Singer).
Education: Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, from which he also received an M.B.A. degree.
Married July 10, 1994 to Karen Ann Herskovitz, landscape architect
Career:
"Principal with Ackman Brothers & Singer, Inc. where he arranged and structured equity and debt financing for real estate investors and developers."
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"Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group is a 74-year old firm, specializing in debt and equity financing, which was started in 1926 by Larry Ackman's father Herman and his brother Burt. After Larry took over the firm in the 1960's, he took on an outside partner, Andy Singer, and changed the company's name to Ackman Brothers & Singer. But although Ackman and Singer have remained together for twenty years, in 1989 Larry decided to make a fresh start. Ackman Brothers & Singer was dissolved, and in 1995 Ackman-Ziff took its place, when Larry asked Simon, then his financial analyst, to become his new partner."
Bio from approximately 1998
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David P. Berkowitz is a founding principal of Gotham Partners Management Co. and it's affiliates, and has co-managed the partnership since its inception in 1993. Mr. Berkowitz was a technical development specialist with Amoco's engineering plastics division and, subsequently, managed Pixley-Richards, a custom manufacturing and engineering service company in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Mr. Berkowitz holds a Bachelor and Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he was awarded a Baker Scholarship.
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1/7/03 - Gotham Partners Closing Two Funds
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2/13/03 - The Hedge-Fund Witch Hunt
Eliot Spitzer's latest investigation is pursuing the wrong guys.
"Founder, president, and managing member of Pershing Square Capital Management, LP."
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1/12/04 - Gotham Partners' Ackman Back in Hedge Fund Game
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Plains Resources (PDF Warning)
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4/27/05 - Buys 9.3% stake in Wendy's
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1/19/06 - Pershing Square Capital presents Yet another plan for McDonald's
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Seeking Alpha Article from 3/28/2007.
Number of shares; position's % of overall fund
Barnes & Noble Inc (BKS): 5.5 million shares; 13.4%
Borders Group Inc (BGP): 6.8 million shares; 9.4%
Ceridian Corp (CEN): 15.7 million shares; 27%
McDonald's Corp (MCD): 18.5 million shares; 50.2%
Total Holdings $1.63+ billion
