Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Billionaire Investor Says He’s Newly Focused On “Need To Make Money”

Billionaire hedge fund magnate Bill Ackman told Bloomberg this week that he used to take making money for granted.

“I need to make money,” the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management told the news organization. “Now I’m very focused.”

The comments, made at a dinner benefitting the Pershing Square Foundation, which Ackman also founded, come months after Ackman threw in the towel on an ill-fated investment in the firm Valeant Pharmaceuticals, losing over $3 billion. Pershing itself has taken a thorough beating over the past two years.

“The biggest investment failure of my career happened in the last 18 months or so,” Ackman said at the gala, according to Bloomberg. “I blame part of that on not managing my time effectively.”

Pershing Square Foundation has supported a number of Jewish causes, including the Center for Jewish History and Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s Aleph Society.

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.