Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #413

Bill Ackman explains his activist investing philosophy, defends his role in Claudine Gay’s resignation, and argues Biden must step aside for Dean Phillips.

• Ackman’s General Growth Properties investment turned ~$60M into over $3B starting in November 2008 and is still held 15 years later.
• Pershing Square bought Alphabet around 15x earnings after Google’s botched Bard demo, calling the AI panic an overreaction.
• Ackman says Harvard’s board failed by letting outside pressure force Gay’s resignation rather than acting on leadership failures directly.
• He claims a prior Harvard presidential candidate was dropped just before announcement due to a plagiarism problem, forcing Larry Bacow onto the role as a stopgap.
• Universal Music Group is a core holding because Ackman believes human artist identity is non-replicable and streaming revenue is more predictable than physical formats.
• Ackman argues more than 50% of stock market capital is now passive/indexed, which has strengthened the leverage of activist investors as de facto thought leaders.
• He describes Dean Phillips as the only remaining Democratic candidate who can win delegates, noting Phillips reached 20% in New Hampshire with minimal funding.
• Ackman credits X (Twitter) as a critical counterweight to centralized media, citing his ability to reach ~5M people with a rebuttal within hours of a Washington Post story.

Guests: Bill Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management · 2024-02-20 · Watch on YouTube