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| 4. William Ackman / $950 million | ||
| Title: Founder and chief executive officer Firm: Pershing Square Capital Management (New York) Age: 49 2014 Rank: No. 4 2014 Earnings: $950 million 2013 Rank: Did not qualify Years on list: 3 | Source of 2014 earnings: Big gain from Allergan and lesser gains from Canadian Pacific Railway, Herbalife short, Restaurant Brands International and Air Products and Chemicals Education: MBA, Harvard Business School, 1992 BA, Harvard College, 1988 | |
Pershing Square Capital Management founder William Ackman was the best performer among last year’s top earners. His various funds netted between 36 and 40.4 percent, driven by Allergan, easily his biggest winner, which kicked in 19.1 percentage points of the 53.1 percentage points of gross gains after Ackman teamed up with Valeant Pharmaceuticals International in its failed hostile bid to buy the Botox maker. Allergan eventually ended up in the medicine chest of drugmaker Actavis. Earlier this year Ackman made a big bet on Valeant. Pershing Square’s even more controversial bet against nutritional-supplement maker Herbalife was its third-largest gain. Ackman, who has partly staked his reputation on his Herbalife short, privately tells people he thinks 2015 is the year that the multilevel marketer’s pyramid scheme, as he calls it, will finally collapse. Altogether long positions, including Canadian Pacific Railway, Restaurant Brands International, and Air Products and Chemicals, accounted for 42.4 percentage points of gross gains last year while shorts kicked in an additional 5.8 percentage points. At year-end Pershing Square had $19 billion under management, up 51 percent from the previous year. This included $6.56 billion in Pershing Square Holdings, a publicly traded investment vehicle launched on December 31, 2012, that raised a further $2.8 billion by the time the shares were listed in an October 2014 IPO. Ackman, who has pledged his personal profits from his Herbalife short to charity, earlier this year also committed to donating $10 million over three years to TheDream.US, a nonprofit that helps immigrant youths pay for college, through his Pershing Square Foundation. Since its December 2006 founding by Ackman and his wife, Karen, the foundation has committed a total of $300 million in grants and social investments.
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