Pershing Square Capital Management

In 2003, William A. (Bill) Ackman founded Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P., serving as its Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Before that, he co-founded and co-managed the investment adviser Gotham Partners until 2003.⁠[1][1]

In its initial period, the firm focused on “transactional activism”: investing in undervalued companies and catalyzing corporate events such as spinoffs, asset or corporate transactions, and changes in corporate structure to unlock shareholder value. The firm later recalled that it did not yet have sufficient reputational equity or credibility to exert influence in the boardroom without transactional activism.⁠[1][1][1]

On January 1, 2004, the firm’s first fund, Pershing Square, L.P. (PSLP), a private investment fund organized as a Delaware limited partnership, began investing.⁠[1][1]

In January 2005, Pershing Square International, Ltd. (PSINTL), a Cayman Islands exempted company, began investing. Both PSLP and PSINTL were open-ended private funds with periodic redemption rights for investors.⁠[1][1]

Over time, the firm’s approach shifted toward deeper, longer-term operating engagements. In 2010, Ackman joined the board of directors of General Growth Properties, Inc. (GGP) and, as a major stockholder, led its financial restructuring, including the identification and recruitment of new management.⁠[1][1]

In 2012, the firm won a proxy fight at Canadian Pacific Railway (now Canadian Pacific Kansas City), replacing the substantial majority of the incumbent board with its nominees, and then recruited an industry veteran to lead a turnaround of the company.⁠[1][1]

On December 31, 2012, the firm launched its first core permanent capital fund, Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (PSH). Believing at the time that the ability to earn a performance fee was critical to attracting and retaining talent, the firm chose a listing venue outside the United States for PSH where regulatory requirements would not preclude it from earning a performance fee.⁠[1][1][1]

Open-ended capital had to meet redemptions at any time, which conflicted with the firm’s strategy of long-term engagement with portfolio companies. In 2014, PSH converted into a closed-end investment company and completed a $2.9 billion IPO on Euronext Amsterdam, the largest European IPO of that year. PSH thereby became the firm’s first publicly traded permanent capital fund, with $6.2 billion in assets under management at the completion of the offering; as of October 1, 2014, 34% of the firm’s assets under management was permanent capital.⁠[1][1][1]

In 2015, one of the firm’s investments led to major losses, and through December 2017 its investment strategy’s annual returns substantially underperformed the S&P 500. The firm later explained that this high-profile loss weighed especially heavily on overall performance because market participants sold or shorted its portfolio holdings and bought the stock of the one company it was short to try to cause a short squeeze, expecting that redemptions would force the firm to liquidate positions in its two open-ended funds, which then accounted for about two-thirds of its assets under management.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In 2016, the firm began investing in Chipotle Mexican Grill. Its affiliates joined the company’s board during a food safety crisis and helped recruit a new CEO and senior leadership team, who went on to complete a turnaround.⁠[1][1]

On April 27, 2016, the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing on Valeant Pharmaceuticals’ business model and its repercussions for patients and the health care system; Ackman appeared on the second panel of witnesses as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pershing Square and a director of Valeant.⁠[2][2][2]

In May 2017, PSH listed on the London Stock Exchange, and it later became a constituent of the FTSE 100 index.⁠[1][1]

In December 2017, the firm’s funds paid $193.75 million to settle a class action with Allergan stockholders, who had alleged insider trading by the firm and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International.⁠[1]

In 2017, the firm examined the root causes of its underperformance and formulated four changes: exiting the problematic investments, including exiting activist short selling as an investment strategy; restructuring the firm into a smaller, investment-centric organization; stabilizing its capital base through the purchase by the founder and employees of a large minority interest in PSH; and reinforcing its core investment principles. In early 2018, the firm announced that it would no longer raise capital for its two open-ended funds, and in January 2018 it entered a “permanent capital era” focused on growing permanent capital; its private funds have since no longer been marketed to investors and are open only to employees and long-term investors.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

In July 2020, the firm’s core funds sponsored the special purpose acquisition company Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, Ltd. (PSTH), which raised $4 billion in its initial public offering, the largest SPAC at the time. Unable to obtain the necessary regulatory approvals in time, PSTH could not complete a transaction with Universal Music Group (UMG) and was liquidated in 2022, returning all capital raised. The firm fulfilled its obligation to acquire 10% of UMG by buying the stake directly through its core funds and a co-investment vehicle raised for that purpose.⁠[1][1][1]

The firm designed a new form of acquisition vehicle, Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, Ltd. (a special purpose acquisition rights company, or SPARC), giving PSTH investors a free option to invest in its next acquisition transaction. SPARC has no founder stock, shareholder warrants, or underwriting fees, and its registration statement became effective on September 29, 2023.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On May 31, 2024, the firm sold a 10% interest in its business for $1.05 billion to a group of strategic investors that included institutions, family offices, and alternative asset management industry figures. In connection with the transaction, the firm completed an internal reorganization under which Pershing Square Holdco, L.P. became the parent company of PSCM.⁠[1][1]

In January 2025, PSH delisted from Euronext Amsterdam and has since traded only on the London Stock Exchange.⁠[1][1]

On May 5, 2025, the firm completed the Howard Hughes Transaction, acquiring 15% of the outstanding shares of Howard Hughes Holdings (HHH) for a total interest of about 47% including its core funds’ holdings, with the plan of transforming this long-term core fund holding into a diversified holding company. The firm agreed to limit its voting power to 40% and its beneficial ownership to 47%, and to keep a majority of independent directors on the HHH board as long as it owns more than 10%; the firm provides HHH with investment advisory, corporate development, transaction execution, and capital markets advisory services in exchange for fees.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

On December 17, 2025, as a first step in its transformation, HHH agreed to acquire Vantage Group Holdings, a privately held specialty insurance and reinsurance holding company, for approximately $2.1 billion in cash.⁠[1]

On April 7, 2026, the firm proposed to the UMG board of directors that UMG merge with SPARC, with the merged company becoming a Nevada corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange; under the proposal, the core funds would waive their sponsor warrants in SPARC. On May 29, 2026, the UMG board unanimously determined that the unsolicited, non-binding proposal fundamentally undervalued UMG and was not in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders, and rejected it.⁠[1][1][3][3][3][3]

On April 30, 2026, Pershing Square Inc. and a newly formed closed-end fund, Pershing Square USA, Ltd. (PSUS), simultaneously completed initial public offerings as a “combined offering”; Pershing Square Inc. stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PS, and PSUS shares also trade on the New York Stock Exchange. PSUS shares were offered at $50 each, raising $5 billion together with a private placement, making PSUS the firm’s first permanent capital vehicle marketed to U.S. investors; Pershing Square Inc. itself received no proceeds but issued a total of 24,747,254 shares of common stock to investors at 1 share for every 5 PSUS shares purchased (1.5 shares for private placement investors).⁠[4][1][4][1][4][1][4][1][1]

At the time of the listing, PS Holdco converted into a Nevada corporation by statutory conversion and was renamed Pershing Square Inc., with existing interests converted into common stock; 400 million shares of common stock were outstanding at the IPO. After the listing, certain senior executives together owned about 63.93% of the common stock, and Pershing Square Management, LLC, which they manage, held about 74.73% of the voting power, making the company a “controlled company” under New York Stock Exchange rules.⁠[4][4][1][1][1]

On June 4, 2026, HHH completed its acquisition of Vantage, and PSCM became the investment manager for Vantage and its insurance subsidiaries for no additional fee.⁠[4][4]

As of June 30, 2026, the firm had about $32.5 billion in total assets under management, including about $22.3 billion in fee-paying assets, 98% of which was permanent capital. As of August 2026, SPARC was still looking for a merger target. On August 12, 2026, the firm reported its second-quarter results and posted a letter to shareholders from CEO Ackman and Chief Investment Officer Ryan Israel on its website.⁠[4][4][5][5]

The firm takes a research-based approach to fundamental value investing, with its core funds holding a small, concentrated set of positions for the long term, not concentrated in any particular industry; it also opportunistically hedges macro risks with asymmetric instruments such as options and credit default swaps. The firm believes this hedging strategy helped it outperform the S&P 500 in all three bear markets of the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 high interest rate environment, while acknowledging that it underperformed the index in years such as 2015–2017 and 2024.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

Management fees for the core funds are generally 1.5% of net asset value per year, paid quarterly; performance fees are paid annually and may be earned as long as a fund generates a positive return above the previous year’s high-water mark, with no hurdle rate required. Pershing Square Inc. holds a preferred interest in the portion of performance fees attributable to the first 5 percentage points of return net of management fees, with the balance paid to PS CompCo, which compensates the investment professionals. As of the end of 2025, PSH had about $15 billion in fee-paying assets, about 73% of the firm’s fee-paying assets, and PSH has issued about $4.6 billion in investment-grade bonds since inception.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

As of the end of 2025, the firm had 44 employees, including 9 investment professionals. Ackman has also served as Chairman of the board since June 2024; Ryan Israel, who joined the investment team in 2009, has been Chief Investment Officer since August 2022. Ackman also founded the charitable family foundation Pershing Square Foundation in 2006.⁠[1][1][1][1]

After the listing, voting power is concentrated in Pershing Square Management, LLC, held by six senior executives including Ackman and Israel, with Ackman holding 24.9% of the voting interests and the other five about 15% each. The company says that although a majority of its shares are held by management, its board and committees are composed mainly of independent directors, and it has committed to governance standards that controlled companies are not required to follow.⁠[1][1][1][1]

Pershing Square Inc.: Official website: https://pershingsquareinc.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]