Part One: The Rise of the "Activist" Investor

Summary

Behind the Bastards: The Rise of the "Activist" Investor (Part One)

Podcast: Behind the Bastards
Host: Brett (w/ co-hosts Sophie & guest Kim Kelly)
Date: June 9, 2026
Summary by: Podcast Summarizer

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the emergence and impact of the “activist investor,” focusing on its evolution from the “corporate raider” era and culminating in a profile of one of the field’s most notorious figures: Bill Ackman. The conversation weaves together the history, business tactics, and personality traits that define this kind of shareholder, delving into the consequences for companies, workers, and society. The discussion blends deep historical and economic insight with the show’s trademark irreverent, acerbic humor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction to Activist Investors (04:06 – 10:47)

• Definition: An activist investor (or shareholder) is a person or a group (usually hedge funds), that buys a significant stake in a company to gain influence—often securing board seats or even initiating management changes.
  • Quote: “It's someone…who buys their way into having influence in a company this way…because they have some sort of plan…to make a quick profit…” – Brett (05:10)
• Rebranding from ‘Corporate Raider’: The term “activist investor” is largely PR, designed to whitewash the negative image of 1980s “corporate raiders.”
  • Quote: “Some people will say that basically the term activist investor is people plastering over the term corporate raider, because that has a lot of bad connotations.” – Brett (07:32)
• Alleged Benefits & Real Motives: While they’re supposed to leave companies stronger, the reality often involves slashing, selling off assets, layoffs, and damage to long-term prospects.
  • Quote: “The idea…is that activist shareholders leave…much stronger...That’s extremely debatable.” – Brett (08:29)

The Meteoric Rise of the Activist Investor (11:48 – 15:31)

• Growth: From less than 20 activist hedge funds in 1998 to more than 200 by 2008. Currently, almost half the companies on the S&P 500 have been targeted in some way.
• Toll on Workers: The process often involves mass layoffs and profit-driven chaos.
  • Quote: “It’s at least as common for these activist investors to just kind of slash and burn a functioning business for quick money.” – Brett (13:39)
  • Kim Kelly: “It’s just weaponizing math.” (15:37)
• ROI & Reality Check: Studies show activist moves sometimes help, sometimes don’t: “a flip of the coin.” Shareholder value may rise a bit, but growth and earnings lag, spending often drops, and worker welfare is ignored.

Bill Ackman: Establishing the Main Bastard (16:00 – 24:49)

• Why Ackman?: Brett admits reluctance to cover Ackman directly because of his notorious pettiness and social media presence, but frames the episode to avoid unwanted attention.
• Ackman’s Background:
  • Born a third-generation nepo baby to an affluent real estate family in Chappaqua, NY.
  • Raised on family legends of immigrant grit and “business ethics” passed down from father to son.
  • His family touts “activism is genetic”—but clearly means “advocacy for self-enrichment” (27:33).
• Parental Influence & Upbringing:
  • Raised on entrepreneurial “Grimm’s fairytales.”
  • Mother has little presence in the public record, but did lead a successful local activist campaign—interpreted as another example of self-benefiting “activism.”

Bill’s Personality & Early Anecdotes (33:18 – 40:33)

• SAT Story: Famously made a $2,000 bet with his father to score a perfect SAT verbal score. “I was a little bit of a cocky kid, he admits with uncharacteristic understatement.” – Vanity Fair (33:18). When he scored a 780 (not a perfect 800), his reaction was: “I’m still convinced some of the questions were wrong.”
• Relentless Confidence: This foreshadows Ackman’s lifelong attitude—if reality doesn’t conform, the test itself must be flawed.
• Relationships: Even his marriage involved nepotism. “Nepobaby husband”—his father arranged his first date via fax from a client (38:25).
  • Kim Kelly: “So his dad just bought him a lady…Let’s get you a girlfriend.” (39:03)

Harvard, Views on Elitism, and Early Grievances (40:33 – 46:44)

• Harvard Thesis: Explored parallels between Jewish and Asian admissions at Harvard, worried about how elite identity might be diluted. Concluded that these systems could be manipulated through pressure—a pattern repeated in his later campaigns.
  • Quote: “As one of the oldest and perhaps the most notable… Harvard represents the gateway to elite status…” – Ackman’s undergrad thesis (40:54)
• Early Red Flags: Even as an undergrad, seemed preoccupied with protecting elite, mostly white, access to Harvard, questioning “why aren’t they letting in enough poor white people?” – Brett summarizes (44:14)

First Forays into Financial Manipulation (46:44 – 55:47)

• Gotham Partners: Ackman’s first hedge fund, playing with millions from high-powered connections.
  • Aggressive Media Plays: Early on, he learned to use media to manipulate stock prices (51:56).
  • SEC Scrutiny: Was investigated but not charged, setting a pattern of pushing rules to the limit.
  • Success with Muni-bond Insurer MBIA: Correctly bet on its collapse, making $1.4 billion for investors.
  • Approach: “It’s not entirely about…how much you can make the company function better. It’s about what can you get people to believe you’re doing…” – Brett (52:06)

Pershing Square and Notable “Activist” Campaigns (60:10 – 73:50)

• Notable Activist Campaigns:

  • Wendy’s / Tim Hortons (61:10): Engineered spin-off of Tim Hortons as a separate company, netting $670M for investors.
    • Consequences: Wendy’s stock collapsed soon after, with some blaming the loss of its fastest-growing unit on Ackman’s meddling.
    • His vendetta against female CEOs noted—sold off Pershing’s entire stake after one (Carrie Anderson) was hired, which may have helped trigger the decline.
  • Ceridian Corp (64:10): Dismissed the female CEO’s thrift and focus on non-monetary values as "the worst meeting of my life" and “disconcerting to a shareholder.”
    • Kim Kelly: “Broad with her cheap jewelry, making decisions that benefit me. How dare she?” (68:26)

• Gender/Misogyny: Two reported run-ins with female executives, both resolved with Ackman foaming at the mouth that the companies weren’t profit-obsessed/fashionable enough.

Ackman’s Biggest Win: General Growth Properties (GGP) (69:02 – 72:23)

• The GGP Turnaround: Bill spotted that the mall company’s fundamentals were solid despite idiotic management and heavy debt. He led an activist rescue—no layoffs, company saved, stock soared from $0.34 to $30+, tens of billions created.
• The “Best Case” for Activist Involvement: In this highly rare scenario, Ackman’s style did result in a positive outcome for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

Pershing Square’s Signature Win—But Not Ackman’s Doing (72:24 – 73:50)

• Canadian Pacific: Pershing Square orchestrates one of history’s greatest activist turnarounds, but the plan came from partner Paul Hilal—not Ackman.
• Meanwhile, Ackman personally tanks J.C. Penney (to be detailed next episode).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Corporate Raider PR:
  • “People plastering over the term corporate raider…gotta get better PR. Like, we’re the bad guys in every movie in the mid-90s…” – Brett (07:32)
• On Business Language:
  • “Where’s the evil PR school where people learn these linguist tricks?” – Kim Kelly (10:47)
• On Early Personality:
  • “Everything you need to know about Bill Ackman as a person is that…‘the questions must have been wrong.’” – Brett (34:43)
• Nepotism in Personal Life:
  • “You hear about a lot of Nepo babies. You don’t hear about a lot of Nepo, like, husbands. Nepotism got you married.” – Brett (39:14)
• On Harvard/Elitism:
  • "He’s not…pretending he has a particular intellectual interest…it’s always about access." – Brett (41:29)
• On Activist Investors’ Appeal:
  • “This whole thing…is really appealing to a specific sort of narcissistic tech guy who…is pretty sure he knows how to do everything better than the people currently doing it.” – Brett (13:19)
• On Female Executives:
  • “Two specific instances of Bill developing irreconcilable differences with female executives. Might be worth making a note of that.” – Brett (66:02)
• On Tim Hortons/Wendy’s Aftermath:
  • “By removing one of its fastest growing units, Ackman left Wendy’s in worse shape as little more than a second-rate burger chain.” – Star Tribune via Brett (62:51)

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Timestamps of Major Segments

• Introductions & Definition – 04:06
• The Corporate Raider Rebrand – 07:32
• On the Real Impact of Activist Investors – 11:48
• Ackman’s Childhood & Family – 17:58
• Growing Up Ultra-Rich – 20:07
• SAT Anecdote & Personality – 33:18
• Harvard Thesis & Grievances – 40:33
• Early Hedge Fund Shenanigans – 46:44
• Wendy’s/Tim Hortons, Ceridian Corp – 61:10
• GGP Turnaround – 69:02
• Canadian Pacific, Pershing Square’s Best Win – 72:24

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Tone & Style

• The episode balances sharp critical analysis with biting wit and sarcasm.
• Brett and Kim Kelly riff on rich-kid logic, the cultishness of business jargon, and the performative self-confidence of the ultra-rich.
• Kim’s labor movement expertise provides perspective on whose interests are discarded in all these “activist” endeavors.

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In Summary

This first episode of the “Activist Investor” two-parter sets up the cultural, financial, and emotional patterns of the movement, anchoring them in the life of Bill Ackman—a hyper-confident, PR-savvy hedge fund operator. The show explores how the mythos and mechanics of “fixing” companies are less about creating value for all and more about a small coterie’s relentless self-promotion, quick profit, and, often, lasting harm to workers and communities.
Tune in next episode for the full account of Ackman’s catastrophic misadventures at J.C. Penney and more.

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[For more, check out Kim Kelly’s books "Fight Like Hell" and "Fight to Win." – Plugs at 73:55.]

Transcript

[Sophie]

Call Zone Media.

[Brett]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards, the podcast that we're all listening to right now. You're listening to it as a recorded thing that's been turned into an ear product for your ear digestion. And I'm listening to it because I can't help but listen to my own voice. It's a curse here to be cursed with me on this glorious week, obviously. My producer, Sophie hey. And the great Kim Kelly, author of the book Fight Like Hell. Kim, you are a wonderful journalist. You focus a lot on the labor movement and you have a new special edition of your book coming out soon, don't you?

[Kim Kelly]

I do. It just came out, the young readers edition of Fight Like Hell, which is called Fight to Heroes of American Labor. I thought it'd be really funny to call it Fight Like Heck, but they did not agree with me.

[Brett]

That is a pretty good bit.

[Kim Kelly]

So it's Fight to Win, but it's. It's out. It's like really cheap. It's in paperback. It's summer reading time. Tell your teacher friends, tell your little radical children. It's, you know, it's out.

[Sophie]

I like Fight Like Heck.

[Brett]

In the summertime when the weather is hot, you got labor.

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[Kim Kelly]

Yeah, always. This is an I heart podcast.

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[Brett]

You know who else is a hero of American labor? Kim.

[Sophie]

Oh, no, no.

[Brett]

That's kind of the opposite.

[Kim Kelly]

I'm so curious about what you're gonna hit me with, man.

[Brett]

Yeah, you know, we. We used to. Back when the show was newer and we were like, more on the fly with everything, there was a degree to which, like, I'd be like, okay, I definitely am doing this topic this week. Sophie would rack her brain, try to figure out, like, okay, what guest, you know, is the. Is the. Like, should we pair with this? We still do that sometimes, but also just because of the size of the show, we're booked so far in advance that sometimes I'm like, ooh, okay, we'll see how this topic goes with this guest. This wasn't something I would have, like, artificially done, but this pairing of topic and guest is exactly like, it's perfect. Because this week we are talking about activist investors slash activist shareholders.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, boy.

[Brett]

Specifically, one of these guys. We're talking about one specific kind of these guys who's. He's sort of the avatar of the activist shareholder. Right? And if. Do you know what that term means, Kim? I'm sure you do.

[Kim Kelly]

Activist. I Mean, it sounds sort of self explanatory, right? Like shareholder with a lot of fucking opinions.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah, basically, right? Like it's a, it's, it's a, it's someone or a group. Cause these are often like a term for like a hedge fund basically will be an activist shareholder in a situation where they're going into a company and they very suddenly buy up a sizable chunk of that business enough that they're able to put somebody on the board or maybe even force the company to take a new CEO. And they're called activists because this individual or this, this group that buys their way into having influence in a company this way does so because they have some sort of plan, right? Generally they see, okay, this company's. Someone's making these really obvious mistakes. And I think if I fix just this couple of mistakes, the company will become rapidly more valuable and then we can make a really quick profit, right? Because we buy in when the stock's $20 a share, we fix a bunch of problems, the stock goes up to 30 bucks a share, we cash out and we make a fuckload of money, right? That's kind of like the most basic version of what this is, right? And this is not like a super new thing, but the term is on the newer end of things. And to some extent this is a term we've created to kind of replace the old term that we were using for people who were doing similar things. And the, the theory is, is that like an activist investor or an activist shareholder should like, the fact that this exists is a good thing, right? Like that's the theory that because these, these individuals or groups that are quote unquote, the activist investors make companies stronger, right? Like they go in and they fix these kind of like low hanging fruit problems, sometimes they do much more extensive fixes and the company comes out the other side of it more profitable, right? That's the idea. That's how this is supposed to work, right?

[Sophie]

So this, this term was trending like a few years back when with the Disney, when like, what's his name, Peltz tried to take over the Disney board and do a hostile takeover. And then they were calling him an activist investor. And I was like, yeah, kind of just sounds like a billionaire that's like trying to get richer. Like, I don't really understand the activist part of it, but your explanation now makes, makes more sense. I didn't look into it enough because I don't care about this man.

[Brett]

But you know, they're literally activists because they literally have a Change or changes.

[Sophie]

No, it literally makes sense.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sophie]

Interesting.

[Brett]

And this, again, this is a term that's kind of become more common since the 90s. But there's a way in which it's. It's kind of an evolution of the old corporate raider in a lot of ways. Some people will say that basically the term activist investor is people plastering over the term corporate raider, because that has a lot of bad connotations. But if you remember episodes on Jack Welch, right? Like the former monster CEO Jack Welch, like, these are the guys who, in, like, the 80s, they got really famous for. Like, they'd come in and they'd buy up a company or buy their way into a company that was struggling or even that just, like, wasn't as profitable as they thought it should be. And then they would start selling off assets, spinning off, you know, whatever big business unit they could into a separate company to do an IPO to get quick cash. That's just every media company, original company to the bone. Exactly, Exactly.

[Kim Kelly]

Cool. I'm a vice refugee. Like so many other journalists out here. I remember how that works.

[Brett]

At a certain point, we went from calling these people corporate raiders to calling them activist investors. Now, theoretically, it's because they got nice. The activist investors are nicer than corporate raiders. They're trying to leave something better behind. And that's kind of the. There's a bunch of different studies, all of which are kind of similarly. I don't trust the language that they use to sort of, like, make the claims that they're making. But there's a number of studies that will all argue like, no, these leave. Activist shareholders leave, you know, afterwards. The companies that we're working on much stronger. This is very different from corporate raiders. They're not just laying off tons of people and, like, causing, you know, spinning off business units and doing all of this, causing all of this chaos that makes them personally make a profit and fucks up a bunch of people's lives. They're also creating stronger companies. And that's extremely debatable whether or not that's a real change or if people just started calling corporate raiders activist investors. Like, that's kind of a big, big debate, so to speak. And I think there's a degree to which I think we started using the term activist investor because in the 90s, corporate raiders were like, the bad guy in half of the movie. Like, if you remember the fucking movie hook, right? Robin Williams's character is doing that job. He's like a corporate raider. And the whole point is that the film compares that to piracy. Because, like, Peter Pitt, he's become a bad person as he's entered the real world. So they were like, we gotta get better pr. Like, we're the bad guys in every movie in the mid-90s. We have to, like, make a change.

[Kim Kelly]

Everyone saw Office Space. They were not rooting for the mobs.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah. They're not. Like, it just wasn't a cool thing to be anymore. Right. So come the late 90s, in the Internet age, the business guys don't want to be called raiders anymore. So the sexy thing is to find yourself in a stressed business and do like, the business equivalent of, like, renovate. With a goal of unlocking value by getting rid of old failed management and pivoting away from outdated business practices. And again, the reality is they're still usually doing the same thing. They're like, selling off or spinning off assets and conducting mass layoffs. But it sounds. Unlocking value. Sounds a lot better in a press release. Yeah, unlocking value, that just sounds, man.

[Kim Kelly]

Where do the. Where's like the evil school where people learn to say, like, evil PR school. It's probably not journalism. They're somewhere. They're learning these, these linguist tricks.

[Brett]

I wonder, Kim, because, you know, like, in our field of work, periodically you're writing an article, your editor will be like, oh, that was a great turn of phrase. You did a really good job here. Maybe you'll even, like, share it around and like a work slack, if, like, somebody, you know, one of your colleagues puts out an article and you're really proud of it and everyone's like, wow, that. Look at that. That was a really good story. That paragraph was really beautiful. That phrase you used was perfect. I wonder if there's that kind of thing for, like, monsters where they're like, holy shit. Unlocking value. That's a fucking mic. You nailed it, man.

[Kim Kelly]

Dude, I think that's just what LinkedIn is, like, that's where this is happening. Yeah, that's their. That's their slack.

[Brett]

Yeah, that's. That. That's today, the workshop for it, right? Yeah, that's out in public where they. Where they pride each other on coming up with new ghoulish ways to talk about destroying people's lives. It's awesome.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah, it's, you know, I love it. You love to see it. It's great.

[Brett]

And for society of how, like, rapidly activist investors take over and kind of, like, push out. It's so great. Airplane food type shit. 1998, according to Star Tribune reporter Chris Serres. In 1998, fewer than 20 hedge funds in the US described themselves as activists. The first of these guys got so much good pr, though, and made so much money that the idea spread rapidly. And by 2008, there were more than 200 hedge funds that describe themselves as activist. Today, more than 45% of companies on the S&P 500 have been targeted by activist investors in one form or activist shareholders, Activist hedge funds in one form or another. And one study I found suggested that about 60% of the time when an activist shareholder, like buys their way in to a company, businesses make changes in response to demands from that activist shareholder or investor. Now why does this all matter right now? This matters because while a lot of these activists, sometimes they do like, make like some of these things do work out, we're talking about a couple of these cases where the company does wind up stronger. Where it was a situation where some smart guy was like, oh, these people are making a really dumb, one, really dumb mistake, and if I buy my way in and enforce them to stop, they'll be worth more. That does happen sometimes, but it's at least as common for these activist investors to just kind of slash and burn a functioning business for quick money. And the problem is this whole thing, this idea of being seen as an activist investor is really appealing to a specific sort of narcissistic tech guy who, number one, has an infinite pile of money and number two is pretty sure he knows how to do everything better than the people currently doing it. Right? Like, have we heard it think, can we think of any of those guys in the world right now who have fucked things up recently?

[Kim Kelly]

Again, they're pumping them out in factories somewhere.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah. And it's a deep, deep sickness that runs through our society at this point. So obviously the guys who think this way, as we've all seen living through this in the United States, are wrong a huge percentage of the time. Again, you can find a suspicious number of studies that will show activist investing is good, but it's always because like, well, if you average it out on the long term overall, there's like a technically a long term gains instead of stock price for a majority of these companies. And that kind of leaves out the fact that looking at it that way is a very incomplete measure of success. Speaking of averages makes this process sound like less of a roll of the dice than it is for people in the companies being affected by these kind of takeovers. And I'm going to quote now from a 2015 study by David Benoit And Vipal Monga, published by the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal examined that question with a comprehensive look at what happens to large US Companies after an activist arrives. The conclusion? Activism often improves a company's operational results and nearly as often doesn't. Slightly more than half or 38 of the situations in the Journal study led to better shareholder returns than industry peers for the period studied after the activist went public. In the end, the median campaign beat peers by just under 5 percentage points. the same time, companies in the study slightly underperformed industry peers in terms of growth and earnings and slightly beat them on profit margins. As for capital spending as a percent of operating cash flow, seen as a measure of reinvestment, of the 48 companies in the study with good data for that measure, 25 raised spending or left it at the same level, while 23 lowered it. In other words, it's a flip of the coin. Like there's, it's certainly there's not strong evidence that this is like a good thing or that this usually works out. And when it does, it's just because like, well, there's a long term stock price benefit that doesn't say anything about what life is like for the workers, you know?

[Kim Kelly]

No. Where are all those benefits going? Not to all the people that got laid off.

[Brett]

Yeah, exactly.

[Kim Kelly]

It's just weaponizing math.

[Brett]

It also leaves out the fact that like, there's some situations that go really well and there's some situations that go fucking catastrophically wrong because some activist sticks their proverbial money dick into. Into a situation that they don't understand and makes everyone's life worse. And probably no single man better embodies that whole picture of the activist investor both as success and as fuck up than Bill Ackman. That's who we're talking about really this week, everybody.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh man, the Twitter guy.

[Brett]

Uh huh. Uh huh. The Twitter guy. That's right, everybody.

[Kim Kelly]

That'll be his legacy. Being a dickhead on Twitter, I needed

[Brett]

to dress this up a little bit. I wanted to do just an episode on Bill Ackman because he's a huge dick and he's really annoying, right? And I think he was kind of wavering as to whether or not I thought he was like a full bastard. Like someone who really deserved, like someone who's bad enough. Not just bad, but entertainingly bad and deserve to be covered, you know, the way we do on the show. And one of the things that kept me from doing it is that Bill is incredibly online and super petty. And I just don't want to deal with a fucking social media fight with this fucking weirdo billionaire freak. It's just not worth the hassle. So I figured what I'll do is I'll broaden the scope of the episodes a little bit to make this be about activist investors. And I'll try and keep bill's name out of the title so that if he does, like a find and replace thing, he won't notice it immediately and I won't have to deal with an annoying guy on the Internet.

[Kim Kelly]

Or me. Oh, my God. You've ruined my life, rob.

[Brett]

Right, right. So we'll see. We'll see how long it takes bill to realize or if he ever does. I think we're probably well under his threshold of giving a fuck about that. How many times a day do you

[Sophie]

think he googles himself?

[Kim Kelly]

He must have people for that.

[Brett]

I think he does it himself a lot. But also I think he's got a lot of fires to put out, so I don't know that I think we're high on his list. We'll see. We'll see if we kind of slide through the flack here or if we wind up having to deal with an annoying fucking guy on social media. It's not the worst thing in the world. I just wanted to make it a little bit less obvious that we're just doing Bill ackman episodes. Yeah, right.

[Kim Kelly]

I mean, it works with the whole obfuscation of activist investors. It's an episode about them. Not this one specific guy.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah. Not this one specific guy. Who's the most annoying of the breed. Yes. William Albert ackman was born on May 11, 1966 in Chappaqua, New york. I think that's how it's said. Something like that.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, Hillaryville.

[Brett]

I'm probably doing it a little wrong. Yeah, Hillaryville, right? It's a little hamlet about 30 miles north of the big city. And today it's got about 2,500, 2,600 people live there. You know, it's not a big town, but it also. The fact that bill grows up here doesn't mean that he's like a small town boy growing up close to the land. Right. This is. This is an affluent area that he grows up in. And he grows up very affluent. Right. His family is very comfortable from. From the jump. Chris serres describes Bill as coming up, quote, the younger of two children born to a family steeped in the commercial real estate business. His father, Lawrence ackman, is chairman of ackman, ziff Real estate group, a New York based real estate financing firm. So he's got. Not just does he come from like money, but like to call dad's. Bill's dad. Larry, a major figure in finance, would be putting it like mildly. Larry is a significant guy. Right. He himself is the son of Herman Ackman. Who is the founding partner of the real estate group that makes the Ackman's rich. So Bill is like a third generation rich guy. Right. His grandpa starts this real estate company that his dad runs. And they are both very successful doing this. Larry becomes president of his Dad's business in 1968, two years after Bill was born. He was made CEO in 1977, when Bill would have been 10 or 11 years old. Simon Ziff, Larry's protege, describes Bill's father this way. He lived his deals and knew them better than his clients often did. He was an animal and never failed. So you might see like kind of take from this. Bill grows up with like something to. He's gonna grow up with something to prove to his dad. Right. His dad is a. Like a legendary figure. And you can kind of tell that Bill grows up in awe of his father. A little bit is sort of my interpretation of things, if that makes sense.

[Kim Kelly]

Family business, like family business of exploitation and making money. Like you can't. You can't it up. You can't be the eggman. That ruins the whole line. That sully's the bloodline.

[Brett]

And you also, you know, mom, my dad, my grandpa, like my dad made money in my. In my grandpa's business. Right. So my dad is a nepo baby. I'm a nepo baby. But I don't necessarily want to be a nepo baby in the same industry. Right. Maybe I want to like break out and try to prove that I'm like, you know, special too. That like it's. I'm not just a rich kid. You know. I really see a lot of that in Bill's upbringing.

[Kim Kelly]

Sure. Poor little rich boy.

[Brett]

The classic yeah, yeah, yeah. And now by all accounts, Bill is really close to his dad. He. He and Larry have a good relationship. Basically, you know, Larry's. The entire remainder of Larry's life. I think he dies in 2022. And Larry talks like a lot of Bill's childhood. He's hearing stories from his dad about their family and about like his dad's dad and their great grandfather who was like Abraham Ackman. The first member of the family to move to America. He's steeped in these stories about like how Hard his family members, his ancestors had to work to like, become rich and successful. Per an article in Forward, which is the website of a Jewish nonprofit. Here's how Larry tells that story. My grandfather came to this country at 18. In 1887, he left Russia to avoid conscription into the czarist army, a 25 year service. My father used a little cart and rode across the border on a horse to Austria. He learned to sew and took a boat to the castle Garden in 1887. Right. Like that's the. We were, we were going to be conscripted to the Tsar's army and we fled the country. And my, my dad learned how to sew and he gradually, like, made his way into the United States, where he started a business. You know, that's like the, the family legend of the story, right? And it is a very classic, like immigrant story. Now that article I quoted from in Forward was written about an event, this like, big dinner that Bill and his dad Larry hosted in 2015 at the center for Jewish History in New York City. And based on some of the things Larry said that night. Cause they talk a lot about their, you know, Bill's upbringing and Larry talks a lot about the family. So this is a lot of my information on kind of what I assume Bill is raised hearing. I think these stories that Larry is telling this group about his family have, are, are a lot. In part because they say that this is like the kind of shit that I was telling Bill when he was growing up. Right. I raised him on these stories. Here's a quote from the Pershing Square philanthropy website. Bill's grandfather Herman initially tried to make a career as a songwriter, pedaling his tunes on Tin Pan Alley. Said Larry, he'd get $100 a song and $150 for a great song. And he sold maybe 10 or 15 songs in about five years until he could see this is no way to make a living and went into his uncle's real estate business, services business based on 149th street in the Bronx. His biggest hit, put your Arms where they belong, sold 750,000 records. So that's pretty good. That's weird. I didn't expect that. Yeah. So his dad's dad does in between. So their great grandfather moves to the country, starts a clothes factory. Grandfather grows up in it, but doesn't want to do that business for himself, becomes a songwriter, is weirdly successful for a while, and then gives that up to get into the real estate business. And I, I did find that song Put yout Arms where they belong. Because I was just sort of like, it's not, but I don't want to. I was considering playing it because I think it isn't very good. But the only version of it I have is a recent recording from a lovely YouTube account called Sheet Music Singer. And it's just like a nice person who performs old sheet music, right? So you can hear all these, like, old songs. That the original radio recordings probably don't still exist for. So I don't want to, like, shit. I don't want to shit on that person's musical stylings. They're just trying to fulfill a useful historical role. It's not their fault if the song is bad. But the song is bad, right? And I wasn't going to spend a lot of time on it. Until I saw words and music were by Lou Davis, Henry Santley, and Herman Ackman. In other words, three dudes wrote this song together. And now I gotta read to you how the song opens. I dreamed alone Till arms unknown embraced me and held me so sweetly Thrilled by your touch they taught me much and now I'm yours completely they brought me love in a night Twas a love that is called love at sight And I don't know how you interpret that, But I read this as three men had a beautiful experience together. And wrote a song about it. And I think that's nice. I think that's lovely.

[Sophie]

Yeah, good point.

[Brett]

They brought me love in a night Love in a night.

[Kim Kelly]

I mean, close working relationship. A lot of late nights. I mean, I really thought of ghosts. But I mean, I do listen to more heavy metal Than Tin Pan Alley classics.

[Brett]

So. Yeah. Embrace me and help me so sweetly I dreamed alone Till arms unknown embraced me that could be ghosts, right? Like, it's not. Maybe they got fucked by ghosts.

[Kim Kelly]

Incubus succubus vibes. Like you don't know what was going on back then.

[Brett]

That's right. Either way, I thought it was nice. It is nice.

[Kim Kelly]

Beautiful expression. You know, you gotta express yourself. You get men. Loneliness epidemic. You can't keep it all locked up.

[Brett]

That's right.

[Kim Kelly]

Gotta put it out there, make it someone else's problem.

[Brett]

Instead of continuing to write beautiful songs about making love to ghosts. The patriarch of the Ackman family. Starts a real estate business and gets rich as shit. And we all have to deal with Bill Ackman now as a result, which is a bummer.

[Kim Kelly]

What could have been, you know? He could have been part of a beautiful musical family.

[Brett]

He could have. He could have. He could have Been the Bob Dylan of. I don't. I guess we already have Bob Dylan. I don't know what he could have been. Yeah, Bronx real estate Bob Dylan. So during that speech that I've quoted from, Larry also talked about how when Bill was a kid, he worked hard to drill good business ethics into his son because his own father did the same to him. This is what Larry recalled of, you know, his own father and how he was raised. Dad came home and told stories about interesting clients worthy of a documentary. He recalled Sarah Corain, an immigrant from Palestine and an entrepreneurial lady. When she was a little girl in Palestine and the fishmongers would run out of papers, she took all of her schoolmates workshop papers and sold it to the fishmongers. Sarah came to the US and went into making second mortgages, owning properties that is the Delmonico Building, which she ended up selling to Donald Trump. So these are the stories Larry grows up with, and these are the stories that he tells Bill. Bill is hearing stories about, like, yeah, the lady who sold the Delmonico Hotel to Donald Trump. Like, all of these hardscrabble tales of, like, refugees who come from nothing and get crazy rich. Like, these are the. This is the manna that he is, like, raised with in his brain. And as far as I can tell, Larry loves telling stories. And because he's also got a head for business, these stories are always, like, business parables. And so that's just like Bill's. We talk about kids who grow up raised by, like, Star wars or fucking Indiana Jones or whatever. Bill is raised on these, like, stories of entrepreneurs getting rich and successful and, like, changing their family's lives. Like, that's his whole childhood milieu, right?

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah, just ultra capitalist Grimm's fairy tale vibes, right?

[Brett]

Exactly. That's a very good way. Ultra capitalist Grimm's fairy tales. Now, in comparison, I haven't found anything at all about his mom. Really? Well, like, very little.

[Kim Kelly]

That seems about right, given the whole deal.

[Brett]

Yeah, you don't hear a lot about Ronnie Posner. That's his mom's maiden name. One account that I did come across from Larry. So this is Larry talking about his wife, is that she once collected thousands of signatures and lobbied to convince their local government to extend a railroad line in their hometown. After telling the story, Larry quipped, activism is genetic. Referencing Bill.

[Chelsea Handler]

What?

[Brett]

So again, I'm guessing that means that she had a personal way that she benefited from the radio or the railroad line being extended. I guess.

[Kim Kelly]

What if she was just a real nice lady surrounded by all these demons trying to do something nice. We'll never know.

[Brett]

Maybe she was. We'll never know. But it is telling. Like that's the way they think about activism and that's how Bill thinks about activism. Activism is like a thing you do so that you profit, right? One way or the other. I think that is how he looks at it right now. You know who does love to profit, Kim?

[Kim Kelly]

Tell me. Everyone. No one.

[Brett]

Bill Ackmans of this podcast. I mean, Bill Ackman does love to profit and so do the sponsors of this podcast. It's our sponsor, which might be Bill Ackman. No way to know. I hope not. That would be awkward, but possible.

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[Brett]

And we're back. So Bill grows up rich. He's got access to the best resources available, one of which is just living in Chappaqua, right? This is a good place to grow up. He attends Horace Greeley High School, which is a public high school. In 2008, it was ranked the number 46 high school in the nation and the number 7 high school among those with open enrollment. Probably the best known story of Bill's young life comes from his junior year in high school, which is 1984. And here's how it's explained in a 2013 Vanity Fair article by William Cohen. He wagered his father $2,000 that he would score a perfect 800 on the verbal section of the SAT. The gamble was Ackman had saved up from his bar mitzvah gift money and his allowance for doing household chores. I was a little bit of a cocky kid, he admits with uncharacteristic understatement. Tall, athletic, handsome with cerulean eyes. He was the kind of hyper ambitious kid other kids love to hate and just the type to make a big wager with no margin for error. But on the night before the sat, his father took pity on him and canceled the bet. I would have lost it, ackman concedes. He got a 780 on the verbal and a 750 on the math. One wrong on the verbal and three wrong on the math, he muses. I'm still convinced some of the questions were wrong. And that says a lot.

[Kim Kelly]

Man, he's really not doing any favors for the cerulean eye community. No, like, people already think we're soulless. We just got this guy just piling on.

[Brett]

Fucking narcissist. That's so like, everything you need to know about Bill Ackman as a person is that this is the kind of guy who's honest. This is not a joke. An honest to God reaction to hearing he got questions wrong on a standardized test is, well, the questions must have been wrong, right? Like, that's Bill Ackman and you're gonna see this from him over and over again. This reality's wrong. If it's not working the way I said it was going to be. That's impossible. It has to work the way I said it. The way I predict it is the only way things could go. And when things don't work out that way, he flips his fucking shit. It's very funny. And that's gonna be. It's also this need he has to make these bets with no margin of error based on this, like, insane confidence of his. It's going to work out more often than it should, but it also goes wrong a lot. And usually his dad's not there to, like, let him off the hook. That's an important thing to kind of note. I'm sure his dad. His dad was trying to be a responsible father here, but that's maybe the wrong lesson to teach him is that you can make dipshit bets all the time and nobody will really call you on it if you're wrong in a way that will hurt you. Maybe that's not the right lesson for Bill to be learning at this point in his life. I don't know.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, my God. What a weird family. What a weird way to, like, yeah, what a weird kid. Like, I'm gonna bet my father, who was an adult man, all the money I have that I might.

[Brett]

It is weird that you'd take that at all. That is bizarre parenting, right?

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah. Like, my. Think of it, if I tried to do. My dad didn't even know what. My dad didn't barely finish high school. He didn't know what the fuck was going on in my school. Like, oh, you got some numbers, right? Great. Good for you, kid.

[Brett]

Like, yeah, I mean, I'll take all your money. Yeah, taking your money. Like a bet is a really weird. It's one thing to be like, okay, you know, I'll give you. You'll get this. Or, you know, I'll do this for your allowance or whatever if you do. If you improve on your test score. I don't know. I'm not against the idea of, like, trying to motivate a kid or whatever, but Gambling on the SATs with them is insane. Like, that's a really strange thing to do with your son.

[Kim Kelly]

That's not even. Like, I don't even think. It doesn't seem like he's the kind of dad that was really. From all I've learned, he was like, all right, make sure you go in there and study and, like, you know, go be a bookworm, kid.

[Brett]

He seems like a straight laced kind of guy, but he's a Gambler. You get that bit from him. Like, none of the stories about Larry. And Larry loved to gamble, but I kind of think Larry was a gambler because Bill's a gambler. And the fact that they're doing this when he's a kid says a lot about the relationship and about Larry, I

[Kim Kelly]

think two grand in 1980s money. That's like.

[Brett]

That's a lot of money. He's a rich kid, but still. Yeah, like, wild. So Bill graduates the year after this, and he winds up where you'd expect at Harvard Business School. I only found a couple fun anecdotes from that period of Bill's life, but one of them is pretty devastating. And it was posted on the webpage for the company that he owns. Like, this is something Bill allowed to be put out as part of his, like, pr, basically. This is from the Pershing Square. That's his, like, hedge fund. The Pershing Square philanthropy website. I can't believe he let people. He let this get published. According to Bill, Larry helped set him up with the woman he married. Women in business school had issues with dating men in business school. Bill said, or maybe they just had issues with me. There's more to the quote. But like, holy shit. I gotta take a second.

[Sophie]

That's amazing.

[Brett]

Maybe they just. Maybe Bill, maybe.

[Kim Kelly]

Gosh, Only oddest thing he's ever said.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Kim Kelly]

Self aware.

[Brett]

Things improved the day he got a fax from dad. One of those curly things. That was a forward of a fax from one of his dad's clients containing the phone number of a graduate design student at Harvard. When Larry called later, Bill had already set up a date with Karen. A couple of years later, Bill's dad told him if he didn't propose soon, he'd find a nice guy who would. Dad's a good negotiator. Bill said that's how he meets his wife.

[Kim Kelly]

His first, like, beautiful love story from us.

[Sophie]

From a fax.

[Kim Kelly]

So his dad just bought him a lady. I was like, son, you're striking out. Let's get. We gotta get you a girlfriend, put him into a relationship, pull some strings. Karen sounds like a nice gal. Just get it done.

[Brett]

I gotta say, you hear about a lot of Nepo babies. You don't hear about a lot of Nepo, like, husbands like you. Like nepotism got you married. Like, that's. That's something else.

[Kim Kelly]

That's very. That's very, like, vintage. That's very, like, royal classic. 19th century. Before the whole romantic love. Very business arrangement. Marriage has business arrangements that Larry Was thinking that's that old school, old world mentality coming out. Like, you need a woman, we'll get you one.

[Brett]

Yeah, and I should probably have a little bit of like, okay, Bill was probably joking a little bit with the. Or maybe they just had issues with me. But I can't help but read that as like him thinking about that for the first time where he's like, yeah, you know, women in business school never date men in business school. And then he's like thinking back to all the guys and he saw like dating women in business school and was like, well, maybe it was just me actually, maybe that's not a thing.

[Kim Kelly]

But I'm sure you saw it as like, well, I'm too special. Like they just, they couldn't handle me. In the Golden Boy.

[Brett]

It's important to eventually self reflect on things. So I guess he did kinda. We'll give him a point for that. I don't have any. I wish we had more good anecdotes from Bill's like youth and childhood. But yeah, that does imply a lot. Anyway, he graduates Harvard with his BA in 1988. His undergraduate thesis is titled Scaling the Ivy the Jewish and Asian Experience in Harvard Admissions. And the paper starts with him comparing the experiences that Jews had trying to gain admittance to Harvard in the 20s with the experience that Asian students had had trying to do the same in the 1980s. And we've talked a lot on the show about how like, if you ever get a chance to like read a novel that a political pundit you dislike has written, or like I guess has written, you should do it because it's like a window into their soul. That's sort of the same with a thesis. You can tell a lot about where a young person's head is at with a paper like this. And I'm going to start here's a quote from Bill's thesis. As one of the oldest and perhaps the most notable of this country's academic institutions, Harvard represents the gateway to elite status and to making it in modern day American society, one need only look at the disproportionate numbers of presidents, Nobel laureates and chairman of Fortune 500 companies who have graduated from Harvard. To understand the power of the Harvard degree. As a result, admission to Harvard has become the target of groups seeking upward mobility. And from that you can really see that's why Bill goes to Harvard is cause he wants to get guaranteed a spot in the elite. Right? This isn't. He's not. And he never pretends that he has A particular, like, intellectual interest, right? Like, this is always about access. It's always about making the right connections and friends to him, you know, which. At least he's honest about that, I guess. And his thesis is comparing. He outlines how back in the 20s, there's like, this massive soar in the number of Jewish undergraduates admitted to Harvard. And it causes a bunch of problems because, like, it pisses off the gentiles. And Harvard's president changes admission requirements to restrict Jewish admission because he saw a lot of Jewish students as unassimilable. And his argument was that, like, if we keep letting more of them in, they'll break up the sense of elite identity among Harvard graduates. And there won't be this feeling of, like, we're all part of the upper crust together, right? And there's this attempt to talk about it in a woke way where he's like. And that'll make people more anti Semitic, right? Like, if we let. If we let too many Jewish people into Harvard, it'll ruin the upper class, and that will make people even more racist against them, right? So Ackman is laying all this out as hypocritical, right? And he accuses the administration of believing the image of the Harvard man would be diminished by the entrance of too many Jews. He builds up to an incredible point. Why does Harvard feel compelled to admit minorities? It appears that Harvard is more concerned with the campus mosaic Than with what the colors of the campus spectrum actually represent. Considering the original intentions of affirmative action and other such programs to admit the societally disadvantaged, Harvard's policies do not seem to be directed to confirm the spirit of such legislation. Many of the minorities on campus are not disadvantaged. If Harvard were truly concerned with a disadvantaged student, rather than with its desire to maintain a positive public image for the media, we would see recruitment of more students from disadvantaged backgrounds, regardless of their color. Why is there no recruitment for disadvantaged Poles, Italians, and underprivileged Jews, for that matter, Whose definition of diversity is Harvard applying? So he's concerned about this from the beginning. After getting into Harvard, he's like, why aren't they letting in enough, like, poor white people? And again, it's like a rich white kid getting admitted to Harvard. That's a fascinating thing to take issue with. It really says a lot about him. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's pretty. It's such a weird grievance. Like, well, you're literally just like a rich kid who got into Harvard. Why are you concerned that, like, they're not letting enough poor white kids they're letting too many like rich non white kids into Harvard.

[Kim Kelly]

Where is this coming from? How many not rich white people does he even know?

[Brett]

Right.

[Kim Kelly]

What a strange thing to surface. Like, I'll tell you what the real

[Brett]

problem is, shows he's hanging around a lot of kids who are complaining that there's too many non white kids at Harvard. That's what I guess from that. Why else would you take issue with that sort of thing specifically. So Ackman concludes that Harvard admits different groups of people for different benefits. Athletes because it makes the alumni happy. Legacies because it gets them donations. And minorities because they've been pressured by the government or public protest. So, and he argues, like Harvard's, this is entirely self interested morality by Harvard. And that's true. It is entirely self interested morality by Harvard. But Bill doesn't point this out to condemn it. Here's how Puck news writer William Cohen describes what Bill learns here. Quote, change at Harvard all comes down to pressure, according to Ackman. So that's the reason he lays this out is not the point he's building to, isn't. And this is wrong. The point he's building to is. And so that's how you get Harvard to make changes, is you just like all you have to do is pressure them and you can get them to stop or start allowing members of a specific group. So it's interesting, he's already thinking as an undergraduate, what would it take to stop Harvard from admitting as many people that I don't think should be here. How can I alter who gets into Harvard? That's really interesting to me that he's thinking about that from this point. Yeah.

[Kim Kelly]

Like the genesis, the kernel of what he was gonna become.

[Brett]

Yeah. This is gonna be really relevant much later. But yeah, as you say to Kim, this is like decades later that he actually has a chance to do something about Harvard admissions.

[Kim Kelly]

I mean, like I said, activism runs in the blood. Or runs in the family.

[Brett]

Activism runs in the blood. It. Yeah.

[Sophie]

Wow.

[Kim Kelly]

Maybe his mom was evil.

[Brett]

Yeah. I don't know. I found literally nothing else about her. After graduation, Bill went to work briefly for his father's company. So he. He spends a. He spends like a summer working, you know, at the family real estate firm. The Vanity Fair piece I quoted from earlier describes this as simply a stint working for his father at the family's commercial mortgage real estate business. But the article in Forward describing that Ackman family dinner eventually quotes Bill talking about this part of his life. Quote, Bill Ackman recalled, I couldn't Get a job. When I graduated from Harvard, so I went to work for my dad. That makes it a little sadder. But at least Bill's admitting that, right? Like it's a little sad. I don't know.

[Kim Kelly]

Geez.

[Brett]

While he's working on his mba, Bill gets onto the rowing team for Harvard's business school. His team decides to pick shirts that year with dollar signs on the oars. According to Vanity Fair. At the annual Head of the Charles race, Spectators booed the HBS crew boats. Causing Ackman to defend the decorations in an opinion column in the Harbus, the business school newspaper. Let's face up to what Harvard Business School represents. He wrote. We spent 90% of our studies at HBS pursuing the maximization of the dollar. Why shouldn't our uniforms just be dollar signs? Because it's tacky. Because actually, Bill, even when people are just kind of self interestedly concerned about money. And don't have other interests, they feel bad about that at least. Like you should.

[Sophie]

Wild.

[Kim Kelly]

He really loves saying the quiet parts of things out loud. And then being like, why are people mad at me? Everyone thinks this.

[Brett]

Why are people. Why don't people like this? And it's like. Because it's almost as if he feels like. Because he's so smart. If somebody is like offended or thinks something's bad that he did, it's just cause they didn't think about it. Right. So if he explains how they ought to think about it. Then they won't find it gross and like. No, no, no. I know. Like Bill, what you said there, I don't disagree with. Yes, Harvard Business School does represent soullessly maximizing the dollar. I agree. I don't misunderstand that. It's just gross. And like even if that's what you want to do for a living. You should aspire to be slightly more than that. Like in your extracurricular life.

[Kim Kelly]

You know the SAT answers were wrong.

[Brett]

Exactly. So one of Bill's best friends at Harvard was David Berkowitz. This David Berkowitz is an engineering undergrad. Not the Son of Sam killer.

[Kim Kelly]

I was gonna say that's an entirely different episode direction we're going in. I'm here for it.

[Brett]

I'm not gonna say Bill Ackman isn't friends with the real Son of Sam killer. No, I'm not gonna say I can prove that this David Berkowitz didn't do the Son of Sam killings. I can't prove that. Can you, Sophie? Could you, Kim?

[Sophie]

No, I simply just don't know, the

[Brett]

burden of proof is on this David Berkowitz to prove that he did not shoot a bunch of people in parked cars in the 70s. I just. I remember I watched the Spike Lee movie about the Son of Sam killings recently.

[Kim Kelly]

Hell yeah. Perfect.

[Sophie]

Callback Shout out. Spike.

[Brett]

Yeah. What a weird film. No one doesn't quite like Spike.

[Sophie]

That's true.

[Brett]

So during that dinner event that Ackman hosted, Larry and Bill talked about what happened after he gets his mba, right? So at this event, Bill's talking through, like, he graduates from Harvard the second time he gets his NBA. I worked for you for two years, he said to his father across the stage, then went to business school and you wanted me to come back. And I came back for one week, then chose to go on my own. So that's what Bill claims at this public event. But then his dad is like, that's not how it happened. And says, you told me, in your second year at Harvard, I'm coming back. I'm looking forward to it. And, son, I was looking forward to it. Then you met David Berkowitz at Harvard Business School and created a hedge fund. So in his dad's version of events, he, like, is set to come back to work and just sort of bounces to start this hedge fund. It's weird to me. Maybe Bill just forgot. Maybe his dad had it wrong. But I kind of think Bill felt the need to like, craft a. A slightly different version of this story, right? Wherein he comes back and he's working for his dad at the family business a second time, and it just doesn't feel right. And he has to make the change. Cause that's a little more cinematic. I kind of think that's what Bill is doing here.

[Kim Kelly]

It makes him look a little bit more of like an autonomous being. I came back and was like, nah, dad, I gotta go out on my own. I'm my own man now.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah. I think a little more convenient of a narrative for him. So anyway, after graduation, Ackman and Berkowitz created their first hedge fund, Gotham Partners. Their first office was, according to William Cohen, a windowless office in midtown Manhattan. Now, despite that, this was not a scrappy startup running on fumes. These guys, their first business is not like, hard up or anything. Per Cohen's piece, starting with $250,000 from Marty Perez, a college professor of Ackman's and then the editor and owner of the New Republic and the father of Vanity Fair contributing editor Evgena Peretz, they raised $3 million we did incredibly well for five years, Ackman recalls. Most importantly, in 2002, Ackman made a huge bet that MBIA Inc. The publicly traded municipal bond insurer, was fatally overvalued. The company protested that Ackman was trying to manipulate its stock price. Both the SEC and Elliot Spitzer, then the New York state attorney general, investigated. Not to put it too impolitely, Spitzer told the New York observer in 2011, but we put Ackman through the wringer, so no charges are ever filed. But this isn't quite a nothing burger, right? There's. There's never any, like, conviction here. But this is a little bit more than Cohen describes it as being. I want to read a different side of the.

[Sophie]

I just want to say Elliot Spitzer,

[Matt Rogers]

sidebaster

[Brett]

E. Spitz, we love him. We'll talk about Elliot one of these days on his own here. Um, but again, this whole incident isn't quite as much of a nothing burger as that description by coed makes it seem. And I'm gonna read another description of what happened in the Minnesota star Tribune. The investment firm wrote an article praising a company, prepaid legal services then sold its stock. Ackman said he liquidated prepaid stock as well as all of its public investments because he was winding down his fund. So the allegation is that his fund writes an article praising this company, which then boosts its stock, and he then immediately sells the stock. And that. That's like stock manipulation. Right? Which. Bill does a lot of similar stuff like this. And it's not illegal, but it's kind of sketchy. Right. But this is very much in line with how Bill's whole thing is putting a bunch of shit out into the media to, like, start whatever kind of stock movement up or down he needs to start happening in order to make his bets work. Right. This is him starting to figure out if you're going to be this kind of guy who you're trying to, like, slide into a company and buy up a big chunk of it and then force it to make changes that you can make a profit. It's not enough. It's not just about being an activist investor and convincing the company to make changes. It's about putting stuff out into the media so that people buying stocks see, oh, someone has a brilliant idea and they're fixing this company. That's probably undervalued because it's making a mistake. And Bill understands from the beginning it's just as important what you can get people to believe in the media as what you're actually doing to the company, that it's not entirely about how much you can make the company function better. It's about what can you get people to believe you're doing to this company, because that can move the stock on its own. And sometimes that's all you need to do is just push a narrative into the media so that folks start acting from there. And Bill is thinking about this from the start of his career. He's. He's from the beginning manipulating, like, media coverage in order to drive stock valuation in a way that helps him. And that's always going to be a thing that he does. It's a thing he's going to be good at and really bad at at varying points in his life. Right. And again, he doesn't break any laws here, but the fact that he is in the crosshairs and being investigated for a while is tough on him. He would later say, people look at you funny. I learned that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and someone can destroy it in a few days. And we'll put a pin in that. Cause he's gonna. But at this point, things are going well. It's the early 2000s. Bill has correctly predicted that MBIA is about to collapse. And it does fall apart. Not long after he makes a big bet, he basically, like, shorts it, right? And he and his investors make about $1.4 billion from this correct prediction that NBIA was about to fall apart. Yeah, this is a lot of money. And Bill is going to just make more money from this point on. Right. Like this is from here on out, his company and he are always going to have a huge amount of cash to play with. You know, whether or not he's like, winning or losing, like the kind of momentum that you get with a win like this kind of makes it impossible to see stop. Or at least it means that he's going to have to fail a lot in order to stop having enough money to keep gambling. Right. But Bill's initial relationship with his first partner, Berkowitz, falls apart around this time. And over the course of, like 2003, 2004, he winds things up at Gotham. And in 2004, he meets several men that he takes on as business partners, and they start Pershing Square, a capital management firm or hedge fund based in New York City. And we'll talk about that and a lot more. But first, here's some ads.

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[Sophie]

Just to say it is incredible how these rich assholes decide to name their businesses.

[Brett]

Yeah, I mean Pershing Square, I guess it's like a kind of a bland banal name. You know, it makes but Gotham.

[Sophie]

You think you're Batman.

[Kim Kelly]

Little on the nose, right?

[Brett]

No, I mean that's just a nickname for New York too, right?

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Brett]

But yeah, it's probably Batman for them.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah. I feel like most people just in like the world, they hear Gotham like, oh, Batman. I don't think people are remembering the historic roots of it. There's like, oh, it's probably evil.

[Brett]

Yeah. Now it probably was a Batman thing.

[Kim Kelly]

How many Batman. I mean, I'm about to think about Batman. Continue.

[Brett]

Yeah. For a time. Success follows Bill. In 2005, his fund acquired enough of a stake in Wendy's that Bill got to do the activist thing in Wendy's. And he decides that like what Wendy's really needs to do is spin off Tim Hortons, which is this like Canadian coffee house diner, fast food style chain.

[Kim Kelly]

It's like Canadian Wawa.

[Brett]

An institution. Yeah, yeah. Wawa or Starbucks. A little bit of like both. Yeah. Very popular. Little bit of like, honestly a little bit of like a waffle house vibes too. Yeah, it's like a whole thing in Canada. And he is successful in getting Wendy's to spin Tim Hortons off into its own, like, independent company. The board fights him at first, but they ultimately cave. And when Tim Hortons has its IPO, it's a huge success and it net $670 million for his investors in 2006. So, and this is where we talk about, are activist investors good or bad for companies? There's certainly an argument to be made that they're good for the economy. Right. Depending on how you count that. But it's debatable as to like, you know, obviously this is a successful investment for him and his company. They make a lot of money. Is this good for Wendy's in the long run? That's a lot more debatable. For the Minnesota Star Tribune, though, Ackman's investment in Wendy's nearly doubled in value. The stock has since slid to just $24 a share, below the $37 a share price Ackman paid. Some investors argue that by removing one of its fastest growing units, Ackman left Wendy's in worse shape as little more than a second rate burger chain. So again, what does spinning off Tim Hortons really create in terms of value? It creates this short term because you're creating a new company doing an ipo. You can make a shitload of money if you're Bill Ackman in this. But is there a gain to the world in Tim Hortons being a separate spun up company or is it more? Maybe Tim Hortons does a little better, but Wendy's is doing worse and people are losing jobs as a result of that. Right?

[Kim Kelly]

And for his part, there's no consideration of humanity in all of this, all the investors. But what about, like, you probably had to close a lot of locations. That's a lot of people's jobs.

[Brett]

Yeah. And Wendy's, again, their stock price collapses not long after they fucking cash out. And for his part, Ackman blames the stock slide on the fact that the Wendy's board refused to take his advice on who to hire a CEO and instead picked a woman, Carrie Anderson. And he apparently disliked Carrie so much that he liquidated Pershing's entire stake after she got hired. Which is right before the stock value collapses and may have, you know, helped to spark the stock collapse. And by this point, Bill is enough of a name that him on, like selling a bunch of stock could spark a sell off. And him investing can drive a stock to soar. Right. So it's possible. One thing you could conclude from this is that he makes a bunch of money spinning this off. And then when the company makes a lady he doesn't like, CEO, he sells off his shit. And Wendy's is left in a much weaker position than they had been. And it's just kind of a result of Bill's arbitrary nature, you know? And it just threw a little tantrum. Who's better off? Shareholders and fucking people invested in Pershing. Are Bill's better off? Is the world. I don't think so.

[Kim Kelly]

Thank God.

[Brett]

Yeah. Now, again, depending on your attitude, how you think about business, you could look at this as Bill being brilliant or Bill being a fuck up. You know, that's a moral question. What I can say for sure is that Bill does not stop and reflect on whether or not what he made was the right call. He made money, and that means he gets to keep rolling more dice. Here's the Star Tribune describing one of Bill's next big activist investments. One of Ackman's next targets was Ceridian Corporation, the Bloomington human resources firm. Ackman recalled his first meeting with Kathryn Marinello, Ceridian CEO, as frightening and one of the worst meetings of my career. Ackman said that Marinello, who he noted wore inexpensive jewelry and clothes to the meeting, spoke at length about her plans to grow the company through acquisitions, an idea he opposed. He also recalls that Marinello said she already had enough money and that her strategy for growing the company was not driven by a desire for personal enrichment. And Bill is, like, offended by that. He's like, can you believe she doesn't just want to make as much money as possible? And she's wearing cheap clothes and cheap jewelry. Like, this is the worst meeting of my life. I had to sit next to a lady who wasn't dressed like a rich person. Is really how he kind of describes it?

[Kim Kelly]

Like an affront to everything he stands for.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, my God.

[Brett]

Really? And like, how dare you? The level of fear. It, like, she says she has enough money.

[Kim Kelly]

Like, God, like, for that moment, that deep bottomless pit inside of him, he

[Brett]

glimpsed it and was like, oh, oh, there's more. That's not. That can't be right. That can't be right.

[Kim Kelly]

The void stared back for a minute and he did not like that.

[Brett]

No, no, no. I'm not gonna stare into that void anymore. I should also note here, this is just the second case of this. But so far, we have, in short order, two specific instances of, like, Bill developing irreconcilable differences with female executives. Might be worth making a note of that.

[Kim Kelly]

I mean, the man who bought Wendy's is not a feminist icon.

[Brett]

Not shocking. Poor Wendy.

[Sophie]

Very funny.

[Kim Kelly]

What did she do to him?

[Brett]

Yeah. Here's what Bill said about Catherine. She was proud of the fact that she had no economic ambition. That's disconcerting to a shareholder and I guess so. Yeah. But I don't know that she had no economic ambition. She might just have not felt the need to, like, obsess over maximizing short term profits and expense of, like, the long term health of her company. That might have been how she would have framed it. I don't know. Bill. So ackman owned about 15% of the board, and he pushed to get his people onto it. And his goal was, I think, to convince them to spin off the most profitable division into a separate company. Right. Again, it's like people always say, oh, activist investors. Totally different from these, like, corporate raiders who just come in and, like, strip a company for parts. Okay, well, what do they do whenever they, you know, buy their way into a new company? Well, they strip it for parts. You know, they spin off the most profitable division into a separate company to make a bunch of money off the ipo. It's like, wow, really creative. You really identified a problem. No one else could see that they hadn't done the thing that everybody does when they're stripping a company for parts yet. Anyway, it seems like from what I can tell, Bill loses the fight. Right. He's trying to convince them to spin off the company's most profitable division. But this CEO that he hates because she's not money focused enough, fights back on him. And the company takes its own device, you know, advice. And the company does basically like what Marinello, you know, thinks is the right idea and sells itself to a private equity firm for $36 a share. Now, this guarantees Bill and his investors a huge return. They make like a 50% return on investment because of the move this lady makes. And it's not exactly. Not being obsessed with profit to sell your company to private equity like what she's doing. But Bill is livid because it's too low. He could have gotten more. And I just think this is him having issues with a woman doing the thing that he wanted to do. I think if Bill had walked the company through a 50% return here, he would have crowed that this was a big win. But because they don't do it the way he wants to, and this woman gets her way instead, and it still works out really well for him, I think Bill gets pissed. That's my interpretation. Maybe I'm being fair, but that's my read of this. Yeah.

[Kim Kelly]

Broad with her cheap jewelry, making decisions that benefit me. How dare she?

[Brett]

Yeah, how fucking dare she?

[Sophie]

So likely misogynistic on top of racist. Got it, Got it. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe allegedly, maybe, maybe

[Brett]

he didn't said anything racist. He's just really concerned with fucking not enough poor white people getting into Harvard as opposed to rich non white people.

[Kim Kelly]

I mean, big advocate for the Polish community, I guess.

[Brett]

Big advocate for poor Polish guys. Bill Ackman, I'm sure he was very

[Kim Kelly]

familiar with that community, living in Chappaqua.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So by some accounts, Bill's most impressive and significant success as an activist Investor was his 2008 move to stake a big claim in and General Growth properties, or ggp. This was a risky move because GGP was in the business of owning and operating a fuckload of malls. Right? This is a company that owns a bunch of malls and come to aughts. Malls aren't doing great. Right. It's not the best time in the world for malls. You know, I think we can remember that trend starting to happen. And to make matters worse, General growth was operated and owned at the behest of the Bucks bombs, which were one of the oldest and moneyed families in the United States. Right? The bucks bomb. Get into this. More than a half a century ago, they start this company. And the last of the family to act as CEO, John Buxbaum, presided over a staggering 97% drop in stock value. He is a fail son of all fail sons.

[Sophie]

I have like a visceral I have like a visceral twitch every time you say bucks Bombs.

[Brett]

I'm like, bucks Bomb. Yeah. Like, whoa, that's a rich asshole name right there. Yeah, it's like a beautiful blue blood, like, fail family name, but it also

[Kim Kelly]

sounds like something you buy at the cash register at the liquor store.

[Sophie]

The same perfect, like rich asshole sitcom character names.

[Brett]

Yeah, the Bucks Bombs. Yeah. It is a good name for like. Yeah, like a bon bon. Like a chocolate treat.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah. Or like a buzzball crossover situation.

[Sophie]

Totally.

[Brett]

So, yeah, John Boss bombed. He buzz bombs. Yeah. When he takes over the family business, their 25% stake in GGP is worth 3.2 billion. And by the end of his tenure, it's worth 116 million. Oh, no. He's really bad at this. So Bill sees this company is flailing. It's clearly not being managed well. And GGP is like the perfect. This is like an ideal situation for an activist investor because what you really do have here is a company that actually has. And Bill accurately sees their fundamentals aren't bad. They own a bunch of real estate. They own like a bunch of businesses that are functioning. The issue is that they're managed by idiots who have tacked on a shitload of debt for very shady and stupid reasons. And it's made it impossible for the company to function. Right. So this is a case where Bill accurately sees, oh, I actually could just come in here, fix a couple of things and make the company worth a lot more. And so I'm not gonna bore everyone with a long economics and explainer. This is a case where what Bill does works well. And the whole activist advector investor thing is as big a success as it can really be. Bill's fund inject some investment money into the company to kind of rebuild some stuff. The creditors get paid off and the company goes through bankruptcy without liquidating properties or laying doing mass layoffs. The stock price rebounds from 34 cents a share to more than $30 a share in a pretty short period of time. And Bill and Pershing Square make off like, like bandits and can arguably be said to have done some good at the same time. They avoid layoffs, so people keep their jobs. This is everything working as well as it possibly can. Right. This is not gonna be every investment that we see Bill come into. Right? But this is gonna be like, you know, some of them sometimes it does work.

[Sophie]

Incredible.

[Brett]

It doesn't work every time, but it is gonna work kinda one more time. Although this next big success is a success of Bill's company. But he doesn't have anything to do with it. So in 2011, Pershing Square makes a hostile acquisition of a bunch of stock for Canadian Pacific Railway, and they execute what BuzzFeed reporter Mariah Summers called one of the greatest activist investing campaigns in history, adding more than $25 billion in value over just two years. And again, this is a very successful investment that Bill's company makes. And it really does turn things around for this Canadian Railway company. Bill is not behind it. He is not the guy planning this. The mind behind all this is a guy, a Pershing Square executive named Paul Hilal, who spotted structural issues and how the company was like, working and drew up a proposal to fix those issues, picked a CEO candidate and like, masterminded, like, the rebound of this whole company. And during the same period of time where Hilal is executing this masterful turnaround of Canadian Pacific, one of these the great activist investor case studies in all time, Bill is failing miserably to do exactly the same thing to one of the most storied names in American retail, J.C. penney Company. And we're going to talk about how Bill helps to kill J.C. penney's. But first, we're gonna end this episode and let Kim plug her pluggables. Kim. Yay.

[Sophie]

Do you want to tell our viewers and listeners about your book? Books, Kim?

[Brett]

Yes.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, that's right. Plural. I have. Well, I mentioned the, the kids book. Like, ya, I'm not precocious, 8 up to 14 young readers edition. It's basically like a radical labor history book for young people. And it's a spin off, I guess, of my first book, which is, it's back there somewhere. Fight Like Hell the Untold History of American labor, which is. Is basically like a marginalized people's history of labor in the US it's specifically focused on women workers, black workers, indigenous workers, Latino workers, Asian workers, sex workers, incarcerated workers, basically every type of worker you can think of who doesn't necessarily get top billing. When the media talks about labor or unions, there's not that many white guys with hard hats who like, have bad politics in there. I will say there's lots of other labor books that have that if you want to some of that. But my book's a little different and I'm working on another book right now which is also very different because it's. It's still about labor, but it also is about the circus.

[Brett]

Oh, excellent.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah, the sideshow.

[Brett]

Well, check out Kim's books. Check out Kim. And check out part two of these episodes where we we continue with the the Tale of Bill Ackman helping to murder JC Minis. So all that and more.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh my God.

[Brett]

Whenever, when we're done, go away. Bye.

[Sophie]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com BehindTheBastards we love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

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This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. The Trump administration and its backers in Congress are messing around with our healthcare. In case you haven't heard, they already passed a law defunding Planned Parenthood that blocks Medicaid patients from getting life saving care like cancer screenings, wellness exams, birth control, sti treatment and more. And now these lawmakers want to shut down health centers by defunding Planned Parenthood permanently. Our communities deserve better. So to learn how you can get involved, text update to 22422.

[Kim Kelly]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Brett]

Guaranteed Human.