Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman / Facebook
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman has spent the past 15 months, since the October 7 Hamas massacre inflicted on Israel, as possibly America’s biggest defender of Israel. From calling out America’s most elite universities for failing to stop attacks on Jewish students and hateful anti-Israel speech, to cutting off donations to his own alma mater Harvard for allowing the proliferation of ant-Israel hatred on its campus, and defending Israel at every turn, the founder of Pershing Square Capital has proven time and again that he can be depended upon to come to the aid not only of Israel, but of the entire American Jewish community.
For these reasons and more Bill Ackman is Jewish Business News’ Man of the Year for 2024.
Here are just a few examples of what Ackman did this past year.
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Just a few weeks ago, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Holdings divested from the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. The move was made in response to what Ackman has described as the failure of Dutch authorities to adequately respond to an attack on Israelis in Amsterdam last month.
In November, Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam were assaulted by a large number of locals in what was described by many as a pogrom. They were in the city to support Israel’s soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv which played a match there. The pogrom expanded to attacks on all things Jewish in the area.
Pershing Square Holdings chairman Rupert Morley explained the decision in a press release saying, “The Board has been monitoring the Company’s listing arrangements for some time and in January 2024 engaged outside advisors to review the Company’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam in light of the fact that the majority of the trading of PSH’s shares occurs on the London Stock Exchange.”
Also in November, Ackman condemned the Ivy League school Yale for being “no different than Hamas.” He has also heaped praise on Donald Trump saying, in expectation of a stronger U.S. economy, “Growth is about to explode.”
Bill Ackman tweeted about a friend who was asked to write a letter of recommendation for someone’s daughter who was applying to Yale. Ackman posted the letter in which the friend explained why he could not do so.
“You wouldn’t ask me to write a letter of recommendation for her admission to Hamas,” reads the letter. “But Yale is no different than Hamas, a cult that abides no disagreement, and a cult certain of its purpose and mission beyond reflection. Yale is potentially even more dangerous. Hamas will be defeated shortly. Yale will continue to send its graduates into positions of power for years.”
Then there are the numerous public comments he made on social media in defense of Israel and against Israel bashers over the past year. There are just too many and too much for us to reference here, but you can just do a web search yourselves.
Bill Ackman is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, a hedge fund management company with over $16 billion in assets under management. He is known for his activist investing approach, which involves taking large stakes in companies and pushing for changes in their management or strategies.
Ackman is a graduate of Harvard University, earning both his bachelor’s and MBA degrees from the prestigious institution and has an estimated net worth of about $4 billion. Bill Ackman has also been involved in philanthropy and social activism. He has donated to various causes and recently became more vocal about combating anti-Semitism.
