At Columbia Business School, MBA Now Stands For Masters of Bill Ackman

According to the Wall Street Journal, many a business school student is worshiping at the alter of activist investing in general and Bill Ackman specifically.
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It won't be long before would-be MBAs are sending their applications to the Ackman Institute of Learning, giddy about the prospect of receiving an interview, though terrified at the prospect of meeting with Dean of Student Life, Carl Icahn.

The swift rise of activist investors such as Mr. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP and Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC has shaken up American businesses, forcing companies to cut fat or change course. Activist ideas are also shaking up business schools, upending class discussions and attracting a new crop of future investors eager to make a name for themselves. [...] “There are students at Columbia with the singular goal of getting hired by Pershing Square,” said Robert Jackson, a professor at Columbia’s business and law schools.

Activist Investors Are Shaking Up Business Schools, Too [WSJ]

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Hedge Funds

Give A Bill Ackman A Fish And You'll Feed Him For A Day. Teach A Bill Ackman To Fish And He'll Hire You To Work At Pershing Square. (Ditto Re: Tennis Lessons.)

How do the world's leading hedge fund managers go about assembling their teams? While some choose the standard head hunter and "pitch me a stock" route with candidates who've had at least a few years of business experience and proven track records, others prefer a more outside the box approach. Bridgewater Associates, for instance, has said that instead of going after veterans of Wall Street, it prefers to hire people straight out of college, when their minds are still malleable. Founder Ray Dalio has stated: "Interest in the subject matter is a minor consideration...We are first interested in people's values, second interested in their abilities, and least interested in their precise skills. We want independent thinkers who are willing to put aside their egos to find out what is true." Similarly, Pershing Square's Bill Ackman, who has never been one to follow the crowd, eschews the typical hiring process in identifying talent. Instead, Ackman relies on gut instincts when it comes to making personnel calls, many of which occur outside the confines of the investing world. For example, a former analyst named Oliver White was hired after serving as Ackman's guide on a fishing expedition in Tierra del Fuego. (Per Christine Harpers's Confidence Game: "For six days, Ackman and White, a philosophy graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, talked and fished. White explained technical details to Ackman about fly selection, casting the line, and luring the fish. Meanwhile, Ackman spotted the next member of Pershing Square's investment team. "At the end of his stay, he asked me-- no, he told me-- I should come to New York and work for him.") While Ackman was obviously impressed with White's talent, it seems the offer was made on the basis of spending six days peering into the guy's soul and seeing something special he knew in his plums would carry over into the investing world, rather than as a barter deal for more fishing lessons. In other cases, people have been asked to join the Pershing team after dazzling Ackman with a skill he wanted to acquire. Days after Bill Ackman won control of Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (CP), the nation’s second-largest railway, he was at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center trying to control his backhand against Wall Street’s biggest hitters. “My groundstrokes were actually pretty good,” the 46- year-old chief of Pershing Square Capital Management said toward the end of play at the R Baby Foundation doubles tournament. The event was a fundraiser to aid emergency pediatric care. “I had too many unforced errors.” [...] On Saturday, his partner was Elena Piliptchak of Tiger Europe Management, who played for Kansas State University and was the lone female competing. Ackman’s partner was 25-year-old Mariusz Adamski, a business major and No. 1 doubles player at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. After they were introduced three years ago by Jeffrey Appel, an investment banker, Ackman hired Adamski at Pershing. Where will Bill find his next super star? Let us be the first to suggest the ranks of street magicians, as they have have all the classic BA lures including the possession of a skill he most likely doesn't have and would like to learn and natural stage presence. Harvard, Princeton Bankers Seek Net Glory In Tennis Match [Bloomberg] Confidence Game [Christine Harper]

News

How Should Bill Ackman And Carl Icahn Settle This Thing Once And For All?

When Mark Hughs founded a multi-level marketing company called Herbalife in 1980, he probably thought it had the power to do a lot of things. Help people lose weight. Makes others rich. Shake up the diet industry. What he mostly likely did not expect, however, was that his li'l company that could would reignite a feud between two billionaires that would devolve into a flurry of press releases quibbling over who was dying to be friends with whom, shouting matches on live TV, and, we predict, someone telling someone else he has a right mind to "Rip the eyes out of your head and piss into your dead skull! You messed with the wrong hedge fund manager!"