What will we miss most about the last few years? Well, the list is long, but high up on it is Bill Ackman’s skewing of MBIA. That trade was a brutally long campaign, and caught Ackman a lot of flak from MBIA’s PR efforts, but it paid off in the end. Apparently, he has unwound it, finally. Waiting on the last two dollars might have been bouncing the rubble. After a 78% drop in 2008, I’d think about unwinding too. Then again, while he’s been in MBIA with Pershing Square for some time, his short view on the stock dates back much longer: seven years or so.
Ackman first thought MBIA’s stock and bonds would fall in 2002 when he oversaw Gotham Partners, a New York-based investment firm. He wrote a 62-page report casting doubt on the AAA ratings at MBIA’s insurance unit, and last year seven bond insurers lost top rankings as losses on securities backed by subprime mortgages soared.
Sexy graphs after the jump.
