Hedge fund boss Bill Ackman has waged battles in corporate boardrooms. He writes lengthy public letters and digs in. Now, he’s using those same tactics in wars with Ivy League schools and the media.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The billionaire Bill Ackman has been in the headlines lately for the high-profile fights he has been waging with universities and news organizations. Ackman is an investor known for hard-driving tactics. They are part of a playbook he’s honed on Wall Street. NPR’s David Gura has been reviewing that playbook. He’s with me now. Hey, David.
DAVID GURA, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Who is Bill Ackman?
GURA: Well, he’s a highly influential hedge fund manager who is also a lightning rod. Ackman has made a lot of money over the years betting big against businesses he thinks are overvalued. Another way he’s made billions is by buying big stakes in companies. Then Ackman pressured CEOs to overhaul them, and if they don’t do that, he tries to push them out. So suffice it to say those tactics don’t make him a lot of friends, Mary Louise. Here’s what Ackman said recently on CNBC.
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BILL ACKMAN: Attack before. Remember, if you’re an activist short seller, you undergo the most aggressive attacks. So I’m kind of a battle-hardened person, right?
GURA: And Ackman is now bringing that aggressiveness to multiple wars he’s fighting.
KELLY: Yeah, including attacks on elite universities, including my alma mater.
GURA: Well, it all started with that. He wanted to bring big changes to Harvard, where he also went to college and grad school – he, like you, a Harvard alumnus. So this was personal. Ackman criticized the university’s now-former president, Claudine Gay, for how she responded to protests on campus over Hamas’ attack on Israel, but his list of grievances got a lot longer. Ackman amplified plagiarism allegations against Gay, and since then, he’s gone after higher education in…
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