As many of you are aware, Bill Ackman lost his Target battle last week, a fight he’s shed blood, sweat and tears over. Like, actual tears. As noted here on Thursday, the Pershing founder visibly choked up during his presentation. He didn’t have to explain the show of raw emotion to us, or most of his hedge fund friends (like the SAC sisters in Stamford, who burst into tears on the regular during business hours, knowing the value of a good cry) but apparently Times reporter Joe Nocera begged to differ. While JoNo is no stranger to the difficulty finance gurus can have in reigning in their feelings when things don’t necessarily go their way (he being a self-identified pal of Cliff Asness), the journalist was shocked (and sickened) by the display, writing Friday night:
I’ve seen my share of odd moments during annual meetings, but until Thursday I’d never seen a grown man cry during one.
O.K., maybe “cry” is a bit of an overstatement for what happened. Still, it was pretty startling when, in the middle of his speech to Target Corporation shareholders, William A. Ackman, the hedge fund manager who had waged an expensive, high-profile proxy fight against the company, suddenly choked up and stopped speaking. He wiped away a tear.
Nocera goes on to say why he’s puzzled by Ackman’s battle, and corporate governance in general, and then more on the salty discharge coming out of BA’s eyes, which you can read here. OR: you can read Ackman’s 5,000+ word response, which he stayed up ’til dawn writing (“I haven’t done an all-nighter since college,” he told Joe in an email). For those of you for whom 5,000 is a bit too much, we say: go fuck yourselves! Kidding. But seriously. As Billy-boy put it to Nocera, when asked for a shorter version, “I think every word is important.” So, so true. Nevertheless, here’s the extremely short explanation of the crying:
he had his period.*
And a slightly longer one:
While reciting the spoken words for the first time at the meeting, I recognized the sublime significance of JFK’s quotation that seemed so on point when I wrote my remarks that morning, but so far above the importance of what this mundane shareholder meeting was about. As I spoke these words in the meeting I was carried back to Kennedy’s soaring oratory, and I briefly lost control of my emotions in a way that had not previously happened to me at a business occasion. The tear was not for the loss of a proxy contest as Mr. Nocera implies, but rather in recognition of the significance of JFK’s words nearly 50 years ago. It may also have represented some amount of physical and emotional fatigue.
*Bill: You know how we feel about you. But we had to. We kid from a place of love. You get that, because you get us.
He fuckin’ cried? Really? Awwwww poor baby.
WTF, Bill?
Umm… wasn’t he crying because he lost hundreds of millions on his Target investment?
There’s no crying in proxy battles!
-Carl Ichan
Ackman: The money is IN THE BANANA STAND. You idiot!
he should’ve gone with the short version.
Do they sell Midol at target?
/Full disclosure: long KMB
God god, man!
lol wut
Doh, the box on Form ADV part II regarding crying in public will now have to be checked.
Real men aren’t ashamed to cry.
-SAC shemale
Thank goodness he didn’t try to quote the soaring oratory of B Obama…he’d have been a puddle.
http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?27990253979
@12- this is about bill ackman crying, stfu trying to politicize it.
@12- STAY ON MESSAGE or leave.
The best comment from the New York Times readers:
My God. What a tendentious, self-pitying, self-aggrandizing load of hogswallop. Really, Bill, really? There was no way you could cut a few thousand words of this tripe in order to get your points across?
The Sermon on the Mount was shorter than your letter, and I believe the author of that document took Himself far less seriously than you appear to do.
Seriously, man, you are a fiduciary representative to a collection of investors (whom, by the way, you have lost an empirically verifiable ton of money) who I imagine expect you to act with more professionalism than this whiny, self-absorbed apologia even begins to demonstrate. I am sure we are all sorry that Joe hurt your feelings, but frankly, Bill, no-one really cares that much. Move on.
— The Epicurean Dealmaker
@15- No! Every word is important!
– Bill
Someone needs to get Ackman some of SAC’s hormone therapy, stat (Testosterone though, I think there’s enough estrogen given the crying, pretty doe eyes and whatnot)
@15; It was an asston.
@anal_yst– um, SAC’s only form of hormone therapy is estrogen, so not sure how that’d help the guy.
I have it on good authority that Ackman actually has a vagina.
And that Jeff Macke ravaged said vagina after an 18 hour coke fueled binge, right before he went on the air with Kneale et al. Hence his odd behavior.
That cute Target bulldog bit his nuts off.
I cried when I saw how much I am getting at Pimco.
-Tony Crescenzi
Would JFK have also started a one stock fund?
@23- I like to think so.
– WA
Bill must have ripped his mangina again.
WTF was that asterisk about? You going soft, Bess?
@26- I don’t want to set off the waterworks.
@19
Ya always gotta have a little testosterone on-hand just in case
@analyst: no, and I’m offended you’d even make the suggestion.
- SAC head estrogen injector
ACKWOMANN
Well, there goes the whole ‘he’s got Billy Ackman eyes’ thing…
Mr. Ackman kind of looks like Michael Corleone, especially in the restaurant scene. Check it out.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zgRVns69m3Y/SXV__aztz1I/AAAAAAAAAcc/kD0ZEmfo5hU/s320/Al-Pacino—The-Godfather-Photograp.jpg
JO&C, AckAck. JO&C
Next time you get a physical ask your friendly family doctor this:
How do you make a hormone?
@34- I’ll bite. How?
I am a reformed poster, but this one made me almost post. Please stop on this lipstick wearing male or I will need to divulge all my thoughts.
@36- please do!
–William A.
@35
I believe @34 is making a Chu v. retarded TX congressman joke.
-Nominate me