General
Bill Ackman Abruptly Withdraws Planned I.P.O.
The announcement came a day after he had scaled back the expected size of the offering.
The billionaire investor William Ackman won’t be ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange anytime soon.
His firm, Pershing Square, will withdraw its plans for an initial public offering that would have allowed investors to buy into a portfolio of roughly a dozen stocks of his choosing, Mr. Ackman told his 1.3 million followers on the platform X on Wednesday. The abrupt withdrawal came after he had spent the last seven weeks and more than 150 meetings pitching the deal to potential investors.
Mr. Ackman said in a statement that he would reconsider how to structure an offering and “report back once we are ready to launch a revised transaction.”
A day earlier, Pershing Square had revealed plans for a much smaller offering — $2 billion — than the one he originally predicted. Mr. Ackman said in February that he would look to raise $10 billion or more in a U.S. publicly traded vehicle, Pershing Square USA. More recently in investor meetings, he floated $25 billion as a possible size.
The plans for a potential offering followed Mr. Ackman’s increasingly public pronouncements on social and political topics. In regulatory filings, he said his “brand-name profile and broad retail following” could drive investor interest.
Last year, he waged an aggressive and successful public campaign to push out the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, questioning her response to complaints of antisemitism on campus and amplifying allegations of plagiarism against her. In recent weeks, he has been vocal, among other topics, about the presidential election, endorsing former President Donald J. Trump and predicting that he would “win in a landslide,” adding, “The country should rally around Trump and help him succeed.”
Mr. Ackman compared his ambitions for his fund to the outsize long-term returns that Warren E. Buffett has achieved with Berkshire Hathaway. Mr. Ackman has another publicly traded fund, Pershing Square Holdings, which trades in London and Amsterdam.
The road to a potential offering had been bumpy for Mr. Ackman and Pershing Square USA. Trading in the fund was originally scheduled to begin on Tuesday morning but was postponed because the Security and Exchange Commission needed to review a letter Mr. Ackman had sent privately to some existing investors in his firm.
In that letter, Mr. Ackman noted that several investors had planned to take part in the offering. One hedge fund, Baupost Group, which he said would be a major investor in the offering, said in recent days that it would not buy any of the stock.
