吃什么比尔阿克曼？

On a pitch-black winter night in San Diego, California, Bill Ackman and several friends slipped into wet suits, boarded a van to a nearby pier, jumped into the frigid waters of the Pacific Ocean, and swam toward a distant string of lights.

Forty minutes in, one of the activist investor’s friends got a cramp and started to scream. “This is the kind of stuff where people drown. I thought I was done,” says Robert Jaffe, founding partner of hedge fund Force Capital. Another hedge fund manager, Kase Capital’s Whitney Tilson, survived the ordeal by crossing his arms over his chest to hold in body heat.“There’s nothing more frightening than swimming in the ocean at night,” he says.

Tilson, a friend of Ackman’s from their days at Harvard, had suggested the outing, an arduous three-and-a-half-day training camp with a group of former Navy Seals who bill it as a leadership course and call the night swim a “face your fears” challenge. Ackman thought it “sounded kind of cool.” He convinced 22 friends to join him.

At the time, Ackman didn’t have much to fear. It was January 2015 and Bloomberg had just named the then–49-year-old the top hedge fund manager of the year after his Pershing Square Capital Management hedge funds turned in blockbuster returns of 37 to 40 percent. He alone had earned nearly $1 billion, making the亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者的alpha列出最高的对冲基金经理。

Peeling off his wet suit after the Pacific Ocean swim, Ackman looked dazed, his pale-green eyes glassy and his wiry silver hair sticking straight up. He could barely talk, but managed a few words when asked how he felt: “Cold, wet, still awake. Sort of having fun.”

It was classic Ackman — a man known for his ability to spin the most unpleasant event into a positive experience. In retrospect, however, the Navy Seals weekend was a high point. Pershing Square’s assets were then $18.5 billion, in part because Ackman had raised $3 billion the previous October by launching a permanent capital vehicle, Pershing Square Holdings, a publicly traded hedge fund listed on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. At the time, his annualized return over 11 years was more than 20 percent, among the highest in the industry.

Today, after losing billions of dollars and with his hedge fund assets halved, Ackman is in darker waters. And as questions swirl about his future, even he admits he’s not having fun anymore.

“失去人的钱永远不会有趣，”克斯曼在他的曼哈顿海运办事处通风办公室近期广泛的采访中承认，其白色大理石地板和膨胀的中央公园享有裸露海军海豹训练营的世界。

Pershing Square, meanwhile, is facing its third down year in a row, and Pershing Square Holdings — which is now also listed on the London Stock Exchange — is trading at little more than half its IPO price. That this year’s losses are relatively minor does little to change the narrative, one marked by the firm’s disastrous loss on disgraced Canadian drugmaker Valeant, Ackman’s five-year battle with Herbalife, and the more recent proxy defeat at ADP: The onetime boy wonder of activist investing is enduring a historic losing streak.

Ackman still owns some big winners, but his funds are carrying losses on a number of other bets. These include troubled eatery Chipotle Mexican Grill, which Ackman claims is in the midst of a turnaround as it searches for a new CEO, and his long-suffering short on Herbalife, the multilevel marketing company he believes is a pyramid scheme.

一些Ackman的传统对冲基金支持者不等待他是否可以将输家更改为获奖者。在过去的两年里，投资者已经拉出了大约20亿美元的歌曲广场。整体公司的管理层现已降至950亿美元，并可能在年底面临更多赎回。当然，所有这一切都在汹涌的牛市期间发生。

Ackman’s most recent defeat is yet another disappointment. In November, after a bruising 90-day proxy battle for board seats at ADP, the human resources software company, Ackman failed to win a seat for either himself or Pershing Square’s two other nominees.

The loss raised more questions about the future of this former Wall Street rock star. Possibly more than any hedge fund manager, he created the era of the swaggering activist who could move markets simply by going on CNBC and announcing his presence in a stock. Now people are asking: Can he recover the hedge fund world’s esteem — or has his reputation been permanently tarnished?

Ackman以丰富的自信心和旺盛的自我而闻名，没有任何一种。他说ADP将不得不对股东赢得代理竞赛的承诺，或者他将于明年再次举办石板。“现在管理是非常仔细的观看，球在他们的球场上，”他指出。

The hedge fund titan, whom福布斯estimates is still worth $1.3 billion, vows to come back. Investors who are sticking with him, as well as fellow activists and other hedge fund managers — including some who have criticized him publicly but declined to go on the record for this article — tend to agree.

“He didn’t get dumb overnight, and at some point he will find something really great and he will make a lot of money for investors,” says a major investor in Pershing Square who has been there since the early days, adding, “Everyone is down on Bill Ackman, so he’s the contrarian bet.”

Ackman, who relishes being a contrarian, is by turns defensive, apologetic, and adamant. Wearing a crisp blue-striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he keeps his arms crossed for the first half-hour of our interview, insistent that the ADP vote could eventually turn into a big win. “We lost the battle, but we expect to win the war,” he says.

当他承诺使投资者整体和防弹公司的公司来说，通常乐观的活动家变得更加动漫。“投资者是否对我们的表现不满意？I’m对我们的表现不满意，“他兴奋地说，他的眼睛因为他的手臂开放而爆发。“但如果我恢复了我期望的方式，歌曲广场变得更加强大。我们永远不会再挑战它了。“他补充说，会有“不再是奥巴尼斯”。

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最近与ADP的战斗展示了达克曼返回荣耀的票据票据多么。要了解动态，必须看看2014年 - 而Ackman的最后一个井喷成功。

那一年，Ackman与Valeant首席执行官Michael Pearson合作，对药品公司allergan的大胆和有争议的竞争，通过在目标中取得近10％的股权。Allergan通过销售Actavis，Allergan逃脱了另一个串行药品公司收购者。随着股票飙升，潘兴广场制作了22亿美元。

Flush with money from the sale and having grown comfortable with Pearson, Pershing Square in March 2015 took a passive 5 percent stake in Valeant itself. But only six months later, Valeant came under scrutiny for the exorbitant prices it was charging for its drugs and for using a specialty pharmacy called Philidor that had allegedly engaged in fraud. The stock began to plummet, but Ackman — who claims he hadn’t known about the price gouging or Philidor’s activities — held on. “That was the mistake I made. I should have sold when the Philidor news broke,” he admits. “To this day I suffer the psychological torture of that.” (Ackman also is still fighting an investor lawsuit against him and Valeant over their Allergan play.)

皮尔森在做大量的钱e effort to buy Allergan clouded Ackman’s judgment, says an individual close to him. But in March 2016, as Valeant continued to crater, Ackman helped engineer Pearson’s ouster, joined the board, found a new CEO, and began trying to stabilize Valeant. Although his efforts helped stave off bankruptcy for Valeant, Ackman says he was spending too much time on such a small position. He finally sold out this past March, losing $4 billion.

今年，Ackman希望戏剧性较少的东西。他选择了一个经典的价值游戏 - 在一个陷入困境的行业中，一个令人困惑的股票 - 但如果无聊的话，他认为有可能更大的东西。在踢几种想法之后，在他的团队研究六个月后，他定于ADP。选择留下了人们的头;股票多年来一直没有稳定。

“I thought even if we were unsuccessful as an activist, we were still going to make money,” Ackman concedes. In fact, he is already profiting. Pershing Square paid an average of $104 per share for an 8.3 percent stake worth $2.3 billion at the time. The stock is now hovering around $116.

潘兴广场于5月开始购买股票，当ADP交易到100美元，然后在筹集有几个投资者的共投资车辆中筹集5亿美元后买了更多，包括以前从未用过的歌舞广场投资过。随着越来越多的人的行动，佩斯希望购买ADP的传言开始进入市场，股票开始激增，导致7月27日的彭博会报告，亚克曼正在建立股份。当天早些时候，ADP宣布了盈利，缺少分析师的估计，并降低了今年的指导。这些新闻通常会发出库存，但Ackman谣言带领ADP飙升至120美元。

Ackman says he had never before contacted a company until after he finished building his position. But the news — though unconfirmed — was out. And besides, he wanted a favor.

On August 1 he called ADP president and CEO Carlos Rodriguez because nominations to the company’s board were due in ten days. Ackman says he asked for an extension to that deadline so he could meet with the full board to share his analysis of the company after incorporating the latest earnings report and guidance for the next year.

“ADP不得不失去什么呢?”他thought, figuring there was an 80 percent chance of a consensual outcome. Speaking withInstitutional Investor,Ackman laid out his thinking publicly for the first time, noting that he believed his success with Air Products and Chemicals — the industrial gas company that had agreed to take Pershing Square’s suggestions and eventually installed its CEO candidate with no public fanfare — would be a positive. After all, the former chairman of Air Products was also ADP’s board chair. And Ackman says he had been told by several former high-level ADP executives that Rodriguez was planning to retire soon.

他错误地估计了。在与ADP的Rodriguez的最初对话期间，Ackman表示，首席执行官告诉他，董事会刚刚在那天早上遇到投资顾问如何处理着名的活动家。

Ackman’s recent losses — and the black eye Valeant had given him — had made him vulnerable. But, he says, what happened next stunned him: ADP went for the jugular. On August 4 — before Pershing Square had even filed formal paperwork announcing its stake in ADP — the company put out a press release. Ackman, they said, wanted to control ADP, fire Rodriguez, and add five people to the board. They would not agree to his request for an extension.

The news blindsided Ackman. “I never sought five directors, never. I never said Carlos had to go,” he insists.

But ADP continued to seize the advantage. The CEO went on CNBC to decry Ackman as a “spoiled brat” because he wanted an extension, playing into a narrative of Ackman as arrogant and entitled. In many ways, Rodriguez was borrowing a page from Ackman’s book by taking his case to the media. “ADP obviously made a decision that the danger of ad hominen attacks was lower because Bill was on the ropes, so to speak, ” says one Wall Street executive.

为了他的部分，Ackman要求更高的地面。“我没有扔一个倒钩。尽管另一边的名字打电话，但我一直是一位绅士，“他说。

即使在胜利中，Rodriguez也忍不住在Ackman进入另一个挖掘。在ADP的年度会议上，在Ackman祝贺Rodriguez在胜利之后，CEO声称Ackman收到了一个“屁股”，并要求他只是“走开”。

Ackman was taken aback. He wasn’t the only one: Rodriguez’s attitude angered analysts, shareholders, and other activists. Egan-Jones Proxy Services, which had backed Pershing’s slate, said Rodriguez had ruined his image by “gloating,” noting that ADP was just “one shareholder away” from a Pershing win. In a note to clients, it wrote in reference to activist investor Nelson Peltz’s defeat in 2015 that “contests should look to DuPont and the resignation of their CEO when the company was unable to adequately perform after winning a proxy contest.”

Rodriguez declined to comment for this article.

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Whether it’s ADP, Herbalife, orValeant, Ackman lives by the unconventional move — and regardless of the recent losses, his personality is one thing that isn’t likely to change. “It’s hard to make a lot of money if you’re doing what everyone else is doing,” he says, shrugging.

Brian Welch, who joined Pershing Square’s investment team in 2011 and originally suggested the ADP investment, puts it another way: “Bill will do things most people never thought of.”

Such unconventionality made Ackman both rich and famous, beginning with his six-year short of municipal bond insurer MBIA, which eventually earned him $1.1 billion as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007 and 2008. But Ackman’s iconoclasm has turned against him in recent years, starting with his massive short bet against Herbalife, which he launched to great media fanfare five years ago, irking rivals with what they viewed as his grandiosity. A fellow activist calls this the “downside of what was the upside of being Bill Ackman.”

With much of Wall Street against him, Ackman refused to back down. To date, Ackman’s exhaustive efforts have maimed, but not killed, Herbalife. Following the company’s settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in July 2016, Herbalife agreed to alter its business practices, and its North American revenues have been falling dramatically since the changes went into effect in May.

但是，在一系列企业回购后，股票仍在60年代，并通过Ackman的康宝之血Nemesis，Carl Icahn增加股票。伊拉姆现在拥有26％的公司股票，尽管已经看过FTC结算后立即卖出的立场。上个月，Ackman表示他已经重组了他的短暂赌注，以便完全由选项组成，以避免短暂的挤压并限制他的缺点。如果事情走向他的期望，他说，“我们仍然会赚很多钱。”

Maybe so, but Pershing Square has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars on its Herbalife short. “Every great investor periodically makes mistakes,” says one investor, mentioning Herbalife as one reason his firm has reduced its commitment to Pershing Square. “Bill has had a number of stumbles, and there are arguably cases where maybe he let his ego get in the way of good judgment and stuck with situations longer than he should have.” He adds, “We’re not in the business of underwriting poor performance.”

Ackman doesn’t dispute such attacks. “We’ve been through a rough patch,” he says. “I’ve taken responsibility for it. We’re working hard. We’re supermotivated and we’re going to deliver for people. Period.”

当投资歌曲广场的价值类型偏离有利时，这在时代不太可能很容易，科技巨头推动市场的最新时尚和比特币。根据Analytics公司对冲基金研究的说法，活动家对冲基金作为一个集团的表现优于其他对冲基金以及今年整体股票市场。此外，Ackman的投资组合是如此集中 - 它现在只有十个位置 - 任何一个股票的巨大损失都可以将基金摆动到红色。

Take Chipotle. Pershing Square took a $1 billion stake in the beleaguered Mexican-food chain in September 2016, when the stock had been cut in half after a series of health incidents in which customers became ill while eating at numerous locations across the U.S. This year, Chipotle appeared to be coming back, but the stock fell precipitously after another incident in the summer.

Ackman, who was a fan of Chipotle burritos before he bought the stock (he famously ordered one during a lunch meeting with Valeant’s Pearson), is typically unperturbed. “The problem with the judgment on Chipotle — it’s just too early. It’s 12 months after we joined the board of directors. We’re long-term investors. Chipotle is in the middle of a turnaround, and the stock is down from where we bought it. It doesn’t bother me at all, though it’s poor timing to have that happen to us now,” he says.

But there’s little doubt that after Chipotle’s most recent health scare, something had to give. Last month founder Steve Ells agreed to relinquish his CEO post, becoming executive chairman while an executive search is underway. Despite a 12 percent uptick since the change was announced, Chipotle was still down 16 percent on the year as of December 2.

“The problem with our business is we’re making long-term investments, but we’re always going to be judged on a marked-to-market basis every day,” explains Ackman, contrasting his hedge fund with a private equity fund that can nurse companies out of sight for years.

歌舞广场拥有股市的少数公司的股票价格是公开的，它还具有现在公开交易的对冲基金。“如果股票很快上升，每个人都会说很棒，这些家伙都是天才。如果股票在第一年下跌。。。他们会说我们搞砸了，“他指出了。因为潘兴广场在这些股票中如此之大，因为其他对冲基金经常这样做，它无法交易。

奥克曼可能出错的一切都有。2013年，他在Fannie Mae和Freddie Mac上拍了一块赌博，该抵押巨头在2012年被联邦政府扣押的抵押巨头，现在有一个以上的股权。根据今天的价格近3美元，法尼·湄股票价格如此便宜，但他仍然上涨了50％。但投资尚未提供他所需的家庭经营，Ackman依赖于成功的诉讼或华盛顿 - 财政部长史蒂夫·穆乔或国会 - 将抵押保险公司从保护统一体中取出并重组它们。

And so Pershing Square is ending another year with nothing to wow investors. At the end of November, Pershing Square LP, its oldest fund, was down 50 basis points. That’s close to break-even — but it’s still far below the S&P 500’s 20.5 percent gain and sits atop losses of 16.2 percent in 2015 and 9.6 percent in 2016. (Pershing Square still has an annualized return of 13.8 percent since launching in 2004, double the S&P 500 and far better than several activists during a similar time frame. Peltz’s Trian Partners annualizes at 7.8 percent since 2005, according to HSBC, and Icahn’s internal hedge fund has gained 6.4 percent annually since 2004, its most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows.)

“Ackman is still hugely respected by most financial practitioners,” says Renny Ponvert, CEO of Management CV, a company that evaluates corporate executives. In his MBIA short, Ackman showed “tremendous tenacity,” he notes. Another winner was Ackman’s bet on mall owner General Growth Properties in 2008, when it was nearing bankruptcy, which has earned Pershing Square 60 times its capital. “But I think there’s a natural bias on Wall Street to look at people’s last deal as their most significant,” Ponvert adds.

在过去的几年里，潘兴广场一直稳步销售，就像加拿大太平洋（增益327.1％）和空气产品（增长105％），为新投资提供资金并满足赎回。然而，到目前为止，Ackman没有提出任何与他过去的获奖者的回报相匹配的新赌注。

这种现实可能诱使一些对冲基金克洛se their doors, as a number of Pershing’s peers — including Richard Perry’s Perry Capital and Eric Mindich’s Eton Capital Management — recently decided to do. But Ackman has no intention of going that route. “I’m happy to do this and deal with the negative press and deal with whatever,” he says. “I’m not folding the tent.”

鉴于他的永久资本车辆，他更好地悬挂而不是大多数公司，现在占公司资产的一半以上。在他的大多数其他资金中也有一个相对紧张的资金锁定：在最大的股票阶级，每季度只能撤回投资者资本的八分之一。

Ackman likes to remind people that he’s a long-term investor, and a big development — like a sale — in one or two of his holdings could dramatically brighten his future. Even losing the ADP fight was hardly a disaster. “Activists have to be able to win proxy battles to maintain their credibility,” acknowledges Kenneth Squire, founder and principal of 13DMonitor, which tracks activists’ holdings. But he says the ADP loss wasn’t a big blow to Ackman’s reputation. “It was always an uphill battle, and he handled himself very professionally and competently. I even think he gained some credibility with shareholders.”

在某些方面，最近的ADP战斗是一个测试，看看Ackman是否已经从早期的错误中学到了。那些期望重复米尔比比战斗的烟花的人或斯巴恩竞标的全刺防御肯定会失望。在暴风雪面试和网络广播中，甚至是一个所谓的火炉聊天，Ackman似乎已经脾气暴躁;他越过了关于ADP的边缘和竞争ADP面孔，而不是与其首席执行官的战斗。几家华尔街分析师赞扬了他的研究，以及许多大型投资者，如Blackrock，加州州教师退休系统，安大略州教师退休金计划，以及威斯康星州投资委员会的州 - 投票为他的石板。Ackman声称，投资于ADP的大部分对冲基金也支持他。

明年，当他试图回到他的高水位标记时，Ackman将有机会在一个新的开始。他已经在开展新的，尚未公开的投资。年后，他的对冲基金将搬到新总部，与崇高的中央公园景观交易奢华办事处，以便俯瞰哈德逊河的便宜挖掘。2015年，与合作伙伴的Ackman在曼哈顿的第11届大道上买了一座萧代的工业大厦，最近拥有福特汽车公司陈列室。对结构的广泛装修 - 包括添加屋顶网球场 - 正在进行中。租金，Ackman很快就指出，比歌舞广场的中城位置便宜40％。

目前，Ackman似乎在纽约市的整个地平线上，他提醒说，他的声誉在线。“我爱一切，”他说，靠在椅子上。“当我们转弯时，这更有价值。”

Photos by Maciek Jasik.